Young Critics review: Hanami

Review by Matheus Felix

The very generic adjective applied indistinctly, a-critically, to almost every movie ever directed by a woman, “gentle”, perfectly describes Denise Fernandes’ Hanami. It is so gentle that even the rocks of Cape Verde island Ilha do Fogo (“island of fire”)—where the movie is set—lose their harshness. And, unlike the island’s volcano, none of the shots carry any fire within.

The story is purposefully vague. We accompany a girl, first through childhood, then through adolescence, by way of vignettes in which she encounters and interacts with the inhabitants of the island. She herself is an inhabitant, although, shy and quiet, always slightly separated from the people.

These vignettes, however, don’t necessarily communicate with each other. They seem to start out of nowhere and, once finished, to fall back down with a short thud that doesn’t resonate in the next one. The movie never manages to find a rhythm. The sea may be ever-present both in sound and image, it doesn’t serve as an example for the movie’s construction: every wave that breaks is already a call for a wave that rises, whereas in the movie, the waves lead individual lives, and barely manage to touch each other before vanishing...

As is, Hanami gives us the impression of a series of sketches. What it lacks is not unity, but an undercurrent. Behind the flat surface of the screen there should be—as in a volcano, an egg, or a pregnant woman’s belly—an incessant, violent work of invisible exchange, growth, development, so that whenever something comes to the surface, it has already drowned in the movie’s deep waters.