SCREEN SHOT - Monster ( 2023 )

The story opens with a fire in an apartment block. It's a brothel and the fire appears to be the work of an unknown arsonist. Minato ( Soya Kurokawa ) and his Mother ( Sakura Ando ) from their apartment up the hill observe it, and the fireman at work. She is a mum who works in laundry, and is doing her best to bring up her sensitive son, single-handedly. But all doesn't feel right with him, he is increasingly moody, has unexplained cuts and bruise, and one day he wildly cuts his hair in the bathroom. She manages to get some sort of a story out of him, and it accuses one of his teachers, Hori (Eita Nagayama ), of abusing and ridiculing him. She takes these accusations up with his school, but they simply offer formal apologies all the time, no action appears to be being taken against Hori. And the abuse appears to continue and get worse. Eventually, through her persistence they have no option but to sack him. After all he was the monster

Then we return to the night of the apartment fire, and we see the story we have just seen, but this time from the perspective of the teacher Hori. And throughout the movie we keep returning to the night of that fire, each time seeing events from the perspective of -  the head of the school, - the children at the centre of it. Who is the monster here, keeps shifting around. And you realise that everyone involved is operating on the basis of assumptions, as though they know what is going on here, who is the monster, and ultimately responsible for what happened. It's a real trickster of a tale they are weaving here.

This film won best screenplay at the Cannes festival in 2024, and it does have a real psychological power to it, as it leads you to believe one thing, then another. And is upturning your viewpoint even to it's very end. The director Hirokazu Kore-eda, films and edits with a clean deceptive simplicity. It has a visual style that appears to have a matter of factness, as though he was actually filming a documentary. It also benefits from a sparse, but classic soundtrack from Ryuichi Sakamoto, his last film score. He died two months before the film was released. All the actors in this film are superb, particularly the two leads playing Minato and Yuri ( Hinata Hilragi ). They all have to play their roles from so many different perspectives. That this ends up being a moving film about deep childhood friendships and love, is another of its emotional surprises.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Currently on IPlayer, but worth seeking out on other platforms.