Click here to copy URL

Themis

Himizu

2011

Sion Sono

Shôta Sometani, Fumi Nikaido, Tetsu Watanabe, Mitsuro Fukikoshi ...

6.6

491

Drama At fifteen, Sumida is left alone to manage the family’s languishing boat-rental business and fend off his drunk and penniless father’s bouts of violence. Sumida sees his simple dream for an ordinary future rapidly evaporating before his eyes. Sharing similarly humble but fading dreams is his classmate Keiko Chazawa, who also happens to have a major crush on him, even though Sumida seems deeply annoyed by her presence.

	Author	Review
United States	Miriam Bale The New York Times	"[Sono] gives the film a harrowing cacophony and a sense of trauma with sound effects, including subtle echoes."	POS
United Kingdom	Lee Marshall Screendaily	"Sometani’s steadily powerful performance (...) does a lot to glues the film’s disparate plot strands and tonal incongruities together"	POS
United States	Oliver Lyttelton IndieWire	"Sono is a huge talent, and there are individual shots of great beauty and power (...) [Thematically] Sono brushes against some fascinating territory"	POS
United Kingdom	Mike McCahill The Guardian	"[Sono] has captured not only staggering images that exemplify our tumbledown world but what may become one of the great themes of our time: how the young will bear the yoke of elders who've been wiped out (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Boyd van Hoeij Variety	"'Himizu' struggles to find a coherent tone (...) [Sometani] proves more than capable of sustaining interesting in his character’s plight."	NEU
United States	The Hollywood Reporter	"The daring gamble to set a teenage manga tale in disaster-struck northern Japan pays off in the end"	POS
United States	Kenji Fujishima Slant	"The film adds up to much more than a two-hour wallow in physical and emotional brutality. Sono’s film is a vision of coming of age as trial by fire (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.