A Scene at the Sea

Kitano uses no violence here and does not appear in the film himself. For a director known at that point for yakuza pictures, the choice is treated as one of the sharpest turns in his career. The Japanese title means that summer, the quietest sea. A deaf and mute rubbish collector finds a broken surfboard in the trash, repairs it and starts going into the sea. His girlfriend Takako is deaf too; across the film they barely communicate at all, they are simply present together. He does not know how to surf, nobody teaches him, and he keeps falling off. The film does not present his progress as an event either. There is almost no dialogue. That the leads cannot speak gives Kitano a pretext for what he already does, cutting speech away and leaving image and empty space. Joe Hisaishi wrote the score, and it carries the film's feeling almost single-handedly. It was their first collaboration; when Kitano's agency approached him the two men had never met. The partnership went on through Hana-bi and Kikujiro. Who it is for: viewers who like patient, silent Japanese cinema that refuses plot. Who it is not for: anyone expecting violence from Kitano. Nothing happens here, and the film treats that as method rather than absence.