This is the seventh fiction feature from 46-year-old Japanese film-maker Naomi Kawase, but her first to gain an actual UK cinema release. Her films have been generally assured of a respectful audience on the international festival circuit and especially at Cannes, although they have been criticised as bland and even a little smug. Nonetheless, Still the Water is an engaging if indulgent film, imbued with Kawase’s distinctive serenity and belief in the transcendent, soothing power of nature. A teenage girl falls in love with the boy next door, but from the first the relationship seems fraught or even doomed: his parents are divorced; her own delicately beautiful mother is dying. When a dead body washes up on the beach, and turns out to have a connection with the boy, they must re-evaluate their relationship with their parents and with each other. A curious, diverting, Zen water-feature of a film: a plangent, elusive prose-poem about death and love.
