| Still the Water | |
| Director: | Naomi Kawase |
| Producer: | Rémi Burah Takehiko Aoki Masamichi Sawada Naomi Kawase |
| Starring: | Nijirō Murakami Jun Yoshinaga |
| Music: | Hasiken |
| Editing: | Tina Baz |
| Distributor: | Asmik Ace |
| Runtime: | 110 minutes |
| Country: | Japan |
| Language: | Japanese |
is a 2014 Japanese romance film written and directed by Naomi Kawase. It was filmed in the scenic nature of Amami City in Kagoshima Prefecture in 2013.[1] The score was composed by singer-songwriter Hasiken.[2]
Still the Water was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.[3] Describing the film as her "masterpiece", Kawase said it was deserving of the Palme d'Or. "This is the first time that I have said this about a film," the writer-director said, "After the Camera d'Or and the Grand Prix, there is nothing I want more than the Palme d'Or. I have my eyes on nothing else."[4]
Still the Water has an approval rating of 52% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 23 reviews, and an average rating of 5.7/10.[5] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[6] Reviewing it at Cannes, Nikola Grozdanovic at Indiewire gave it a B+, stating that Still The Water' is a spectacle for the senses, which, if there is any justice, will be remembered as one of the greater films of the competition."[7] In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw gave it 3 out of 5 stars and stated, "Kawase's film is sometimes beautiful and moving but I couldn't help occasionally finding it a little contrived and self-conscious."[8] In Film Business Asia, Derek Elley gave the film a rating of 2 out of 10, calling it "more empty, pretentious ramblings from self-styled auteur Kawase Naomi".[9]