Sleeping Bride
A touching and offbeat romance from Hideo Nakata, director of the original Ring movies (Ringu, Ringu 2) and Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy and Dororo…
The big screen release of Astro Boy finally hits DVD and Blu-ray shelves this week – so thoroughly divorced from its source material, the manga and following TV series created by the godfather of Anime, Osamu Tezuka, that his name seems absent from press releases and reviews. Away from the hype another far less famous creation by Tezuka also finally gets a release in the UK, a romantic fairy tale interpreted the director who gave us J-Horror: Ringu and Dark Water director Hideo Nakata.
In a coma since birth, Yumi (Risa Goto) has grown up never knowing the world around her. Her mother, the only survivor in a plane crash, died shortly after giving birth, her father went missing shortly afterwards, having left her in the care of a hospital indefinitely.
Seven years Yuichi (Yuki Kohara), a young boy of roughly the same age, discovers Yumi while convalescing from asthma, and on being told her condition convinces himself that he can wake her just like the prince in ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Even after he is well enough to be sent home from the hospital, he continues to visit her, kissing her on the lips every time in the hope of waking her – until the doctor in charge of her case, Hikawa (Takaai Enomoto) discovers this and ejects him.
Ten years later Yuichi, now in high school, sees a local news broadcast about Yumi who he hasn’t visited since. Remembering his affection for her he begins to visit her again, and once more tries to wake her. One desperate night he kisses her at midnight, and miraculously she awakes. But can this fairytale withstand real life?
A welcome new Asian release from the newly-formed UK side of Palisades Tartan after a quiet period in the wake of Park Chan-wook’s Thirst at the beginning of the year, my hope is the label will really start to pick up speed in the UK. (In fact, like much of their releases late last year, this in itself constitutes a ‘reissue’, having been originally included on the four-disc set version of the Ring trilogy.)
Such a sweet, cute fairy story, it seems on the surface a world away from the growing dread and tension that are so much a part of Nakata’s horrors, and for the main part it is. Bizarrely coming between Ringu 2 and Nakata’s other great Koji Suzuki adaptation Dark Water, Sleeping Bride is often omitted from Nakata’s catalogue, rather unfairly if anything.
Sure, it doesn’t occupy the horror/thriller genre for which the director is best known – and arguably best at –but that’s not to say Sleeping Bride isn’t in it’s own way successful. Despite the slightness of the material, Nakata’s input seems to add a certain weight of reality to the context. The grand, swelling soundtrack by Mamoru Oshii collaborator Kenji Kawai (Ghost In The Shell, Sky Crawlers, Seven Swords, Ip Man) is never as overused as you might expect, with the film’s most touching, poignant or shocking moments, such as the opening scene of the plane crash, often played against silence or background noise.
Elsewhere familiar themes resonate with Nakata’s other work. In particular it’s the absent father in both in Yumi and Yuichi’s cases – which echoes the lead characters in Ringu and Dark Water, both single mothers (particularly as he changed in the former it from the original husband who was still married).
Though it particularly works for the final scene of the film (of which I’m giving nothing away), setting the film in the same time as the original manga seems a deliberate move to hark back to a 70s innocence, underlining the purity of Yuichi’s love for Yumi. It definitely shows a lighter side to Nakata, even with the approaching uncertainty of the couples future together, referencing Roman Holiday and Gregory Peck’s joke on Audrey Hepburn at the Mouth Of Truth.
From all accounts, the screenplay by Chiaki Konaka – responsible for many anime scripts including Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, Armitage III and Malice@Doll – actually sticks pretty close to the source material, which itself was influenced by a big screen adaption of the sci-fi novel Flowers For Algernon (filmed as Charly) by Daniel Keyes. Indeed, Nakata seems somewhat ahead of the curve as the next decade would see an abundance of filmmakers return to the work of Tezuka and reinterpret his creations for a new generation, including the Katsuhiro Otomo scripted Metropolis, Black Jack TV series and another live-action take in the form of Dororo.
Asia appears to have a penchant for quirky romances. You’d probably put this in the same box as I’m A Cyborg But It’s Okay, Bare Essence of Life or even Air Doll, and that’s no bad comparison. Sleeping Bride may not be a classic, but it’s an agreeable fable from one of Japan most interesting filmmakers.
Sleeping Bride was released Monday 31 May by Palisades Tartan on UK DVD.
DVD details
Distributor: Palisades Tartan (UK)
This transfer shares some of the same flaws as the original Tartan releases Ringu and Ringu 2, being a little too dark and lacking a little clarity. (In fact, I've a sneaking suspicion that this may well have the same transfer as the original release as a bonus on the Ring trilogy box set, but don't own it to say.
This version contains a short but informative featurette with Manga/Anime expert (and part-time voice actor) Jonathan Clements, a lot more engaging than an original trailer.
