(ユメノ銀河, Yume no ginga)
Directed by Gakuryû Ishii
90 minutes
In Japanese with English subtitles  

Director Sogo (Gakuryû) Ishii is best known for breaking open a new genre of Japanese cinema in the 1980s called cyberpunk, but in the 90s he entered a new phase and created something radically different. Instead of dystopian sci-fi fusions of punk and technology, this is a haunting movie set in the early 20th century about solitude, loneliness and imagination. Here Ishii shifts to a slower gear, one that moves at the speed of the human soul. 

Based on a novella by Kyusaku Yumeno, the story is realistic and hallucinatory at the same time. It opens up with a bus traveling through a stormy countryside at night in a torrent of rain, but then it stops on a railroad crossing as a train races  towards it at high speed. Then suddenly the screen flashes with a dramatic newspaper headline: "Bus accident or double suicide?" So begins this strange and haunting tale.

It focuses on young Tomiko, a female ticket conductor on a rural bus. Although young, her life has hit a dead end, she feels stifled and bored. - and therefore this film is also about the role of women in traditional Japanese culture and how limited their lives were. Tomiko has taken over the job from her friend who has died. When her dead friend's lover becomes the new bus driver on her route, things start going out of control. The entire movie unfolds from there, like a lucid dream. It is perhaps a dark romance, but one that contains a breathtaking illumination. 

The cinematography is a gorgeously sensual black-and-white, a style that harkens back to beautifully crafted Japanese movies from the 1950s. Although the camerawork is absolutely breathtaking, it's the exact opposite of a bombastic Hollywood spectacle... here, the smallest nuance or detail can become unbearably thrilling—and what is poetry, if not that? In a way, movies like this can help educate us about how to perceive reality, especially in days like this when it's largely technology that's dictating how we see the world.

I have to admit this film took me off guard, and literally put me under its spell. It's mesmerizing on all levels—the images, storyline, the editing, Tomiko's confessions that are pure poetry, the sound design and cosmic synthesizer score, the very heartbeat and metabolism of the movie.