LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

rooprect "Hana & Alice" began as a series of shorts to promote Nestle's Kit-Kat candy bars. Through the genius of director Shunji Iwai, this evolved into not just a feature film but a darned profound one. In the DVD features he talks about how much of the movie was improvised, but it doesn't show. The end result is a very thoughtful, seemingly carefully-planned, poetic view of friendship, memories, and our individual yearnings for things that are out of our grasp.The plot itself is very cute and interesting: a girl conspires to snatch a boyfriend by convincing the boy that he has amnesia and is in love with her. He's just dense enough to fall for it. But things get tricky when he starts asking questions, causing the girl to enlist the help of her best friend in deceiving him. It's a great comedy of Shakespearean proportions, but what makes it particularly fun to watch is the gorgeous way in which it's told.If you're unfamiliar with the works of Shunji Iwai, this is a great place to start. He is a great, artistic director who does not necessarily get bogged down in poetry beyond the realm of mere mortals such as us. In other words, he has a unique visionary style that's not pretentious or overly "experimental". If I were to sum up his style in one sentence, it would be that he allows the scene to speak for itself without too many camera theatrics. You can expect to see long scenes without disruptive cuts, without much camera motion or with a simple, graceful, linear camera movement following the actors rather than jumpy "MTv editing". This is actually an approach used by several great Japanese directors I've seen, like Hideaki Anno ("Ritual") and Takeshi Kitano ("Fireworks", "Kikujoro") and perhaps it is derived from the master Kurosawa himself.Something else worth noting is that the director composed all the music himself, furthering the idea that the presentation we get is very lucid and consistent with itself. The music compliments each scene as if telling the story, as opposed to background filler.While the plot may seem straightforward, there's actually quite a lot of complexity under the surface. Each character is driven by some inner yearning, and their actions are not necessarily clear until you discover what drives each person. Thus, things remain unpredictable until the end, when you get a chance to digest why each person is the way they are.There's fantastic acting all around, and both Anne Suzuki ("Hana") and Yû Aoi ("Alice") get a chance to shine. Hana's moment is in a powerful monologue near the end, while Alice's moment is in a gorgeous ballet routine which will stun you into silence.Much like German director Wim Wenders' film "Lisbon Story" which began as a promotional spot for the city of Lisbon yet evolved into a poetic masterpiece, Shunji Iwai's "Hana & Alice" is just about the best candy bar commercial you'll ever see in your life.

chaos-rampant The base layer here is teenage romance tweaked a little to frame episodes of ordinary life. Two schoolgirls fall in love with an aloof boy who believes he suffers from amnesia. Annotating this is Celine and Julie Go Boating, which was about two girls embarking upon dreamlike adventure and mischief around modern Paris. What was so remarkable about it were precisely the elusive controls: the film didn't give out that we were, in fact, daydreaming until we were too far in to know exactly where. The clue was already laid out in the first scene, a cat of mysterious eyes and a peculiar chase through empty streets.So you will have to pay attention to the opening scenes of Iwai's film, echoing this. Once again a chase in and out of subway cars as giggly play between the two girls. The other clue is obvious enough: Alice.This layer borrows Rivette's whimsical light structure. Roles, guises, fiction, synchronous games about the fabrication of narratives, in our case centered at this boy who remembers nothing, is empty space, a blank stage, and the plays the girls assemble around him. He's told he was in love with one, then both. They both act parts, fashion entire pasts and emotions.So love as this game of fiction, and getting to allow to be seduced by an image. This is excellent work, and in how it's subtly acknowledged inside the film: one girl signs up for a drama class, and has in fact done so to be close to the boy, himself an actor, the other is randomly approached on the street to model for TV commercials - and this may well reference Mikio Naruse's wonderful Street without Return from '34.So the third layer is how the play is going to be resolved on a level behind the base narrative of ordinary life, and into the stage where love is the heightened game of duplicity. One ploy is simple enough, opening day for the school play both girl and boy were rehearsing and a near-perfect rendition of the mechanisms that give rise to images: out on the stage performance, roles, fiction consumed as real, and backstage the internal machinations of tortured soul. The other is a little more intricate because of how unassuming: Alice auditions for a part in TV commercial.Now so far this is no different than a French film. Notice what Iwai does, an extra layer that is deeply Japanese. Now the Japanese idea of high beauty and by extension performance, what is often perceived as quaint reticence, is formless heart expressed in visible form. Meditation. But even a patriarch of Chan like Hongren could not so simply gauge his pupils' inner heart when the time came to decide for a succesor. What he asked instead, was that they write poems on a wall about it. This is a frequent practice in Buddhism. Painting a cycle will do, an 'ensho' meaning awareness. The hand will tell.Now all through the film Hana has secretly contrived to cling to her object of desire, has lied and deceived. But when it comes to expressing inner self, we note that she is, in fact, a bad actress. Iwai intercuts her melodramatic reactions backstage with the actor's mock-mannerisms out on the stage. The auditorium is empty when she finally gets out for her part.On the other hand Alice. She has been part of the ploy but with a certain affection for the part and with genuine feelings. So much so that it slipped from her, a bad actress in terms of the conventional drama of the world. We trust however that even though the image is false, she's moved to it truthfully. Her audition is to play an image on a screen. Instead the director decides on a whim that he wants her to do a ballet dance as per her resume, and in a short skirt, an almost humiliating prospect. What does she do? Channeling true self into the thing, she amazes with her skills. So what do we get, between these two girls? Flowers in the sky, Hana meaning flower, reflecting Zen Master Dogen's notions of illusory mind images.And on the other hand, the subtlest difference. Emptiness in full bloom. Or in the words of Dogen: being one with just this, while being free from just this.Something to meditate upon.

KineticSeoul The plot of this movie has been done countless times in Asian dramas, two girls falling for the same guy. The direction can be sort of cartoony at times and over ridiculous for this type of movie, but something about it still makes the movie worthwhile to watch. It's one of those movies that your just going to have to go with in order to enjoy it. The story first starts out with lies leading to bigger lies and so forth, but that is just the surface of it all. Watching this was sort of like watching a Asian drama except instead of taking up few episodes this sums up the story in one movie. Some of the flaws is how it makes one of the character more likable between the two. If it made both characters likable than it would have been more interesting to watch. But this direction where it shows the different side of each characters was done in a pretty good manner and still engaging, so it's sort of passable. Yeah so the set up is ridiculous and not that believable, but than again most Asian dramas are like that. Some parts seem to drag on a bit, although very few. Also since there wasn't enough development between characters it would have been better if it elevated the relationships. And so it can give more of a reason behind the final decision of the male protagonist in the end. It didn't even show his final decision clearly, even if he isn't the main part of the story some of the audiences probably want to know his final decision after sitting through one of the focus of this film. Another thing I didn't like was the lead actor the guy that has two girls falling for him, something about him I found really annoying and irritating to watch. And no it's not because two girls were falling for him, it's just the actor. And it wasn't just his performance either, maybe he reminded me of someone I know in real life. All the main actor does in this movie is act all dull and tedious and make a awkward shock face occasionally. But he was a annoying character in this, but I guess it had to have someone that is gullible which is fine but he was just irritating and so boring to watch. It just would have been nice if he had some likable attributes or show attributes of why these girls would fall for him, plus it would make the movie somewhat believable. Well at least he wasn't a over cocky character which would have been way worse. The movie runs about 2 hours and it would have made the movie better if it had more development so it can answer the question why. Being fast paced is sometimes good and all, but it's difficult to buy into the chemistry between the characters because of lack of development. Despite some of the flaws besides the main actor in this movie, it had enough of it's moments to make it to around the 6 range. Especially the part where Yu Aoi does ballet which was the main highlight for me, I don't like watching ballet but that scene was nice.6.7/10

kjihwan It may look like just another saccharine love-triangle romance, but 'Hana and Alice' is actually a deceptively tender and subtle paean to how gorgeous and sweet friendship can be. Although initially we have two high-school girls, Anne Suzuki and Aoi Yuu, squabble over a hapless senior, the film isn't really about teen crushes and jealousy. Instead, as layers of each girl's background and character are peeled away, we discover a surprising amount of depth and resonance to Hana and Alice's friendship. The ballet scene is much talked about and fawned over, but the real highlight for me was where we find out that Hana was in fact a near-autistic child, shunning the outer world from her flower house, until Alice came along and enticed her out into the world. This scene increases the emotional strength of both the film and the girls' relationship exponentially, and turns the movie from merely entertaining into truly touching.Director Shunji Iwai once again establishes a particularly delectable mood - as only he can - and has the guts to carry it all the way. Although most of the press and public attention in the Far East focused on the freshness of Aoi Yuu, it is the former child actor Suzuki Anne who gives a performance of veritable subtlety, so nuanced and superbly mannered that you almost don't notice it until you give it a thought. She has the less flashy and more mundane role of the two, yet there isn't one moment where she's caught acting, something that sadly can't be said for Yuu. To think that Suzuki has just turned 18 - what a career she has in store for us.Although somewhat long and dragging in places (you can only enjoy so many shots of young girls in tights dancing - no, hang on...) 'Hana and Alice' is a rare instance where one is allowed a flight of fancy without the attendant guilt, and in which friendship is explored with affection not angst. Don't let the fluffy romance tag fool you: this is a film which makes you nostalgic for those dreary days back in youth when you had your best friend walk alongside you on the way to school and didn't realize how special or fleeting it was.