«Journey to Yoshino (Vision)»: a shinrin-yoku

Cinema Wednesdays - Thierry Fivaz

As the end of summer approaches, Jeanne (Juliette Binoche) takes off for Japan. The reason for her journey is a rare plant with supposedly miraculous virtues: vision. The plant is said to put an end to human suffering, and is found in the magnificent Yoshino forest. In the course of her research, Jeanne meets Tomo (Masatoshi Nagase), a forest ranger in whom she recaptures a past love.

With Trip to Yoshino, Naomi Kawase (Tokyo Delights,  Still the Water) delivers a film of sumptuous beauty. As the third character in this ode to nature, the trees and their long, gnarled trunks are filmed with delicacy and deep sensuality. The changing color of their foliage symbolizes the passing of time, the ephemeral, the Mono no aware Japanese. And, through them, through this dazzling nature sublimated by wind and rain, the journey can begin. A journey to elsewhere.

For it is in this temple of living pillars that Jeanne begins her search. A search that will take her back in time, into the chambers of her memories, and into her dreams. And like the roots of trees or their crowns, these stories intertwine and overlap, forming a knotty, misty journey of initiation. In her wanderings, Jeanne revisits a lost childhood love and a memory that haunts her, that of a child she abandoned. Or is it the regret of a possible world that has closed? Is it real? Or is it the embodiment of Jeanne's fears?

This is what Trip to Yoshino, a journey of initiation between memory and remembrance, dream and reality. shugendō. A journey among souls, those of plants, trees and animals - which are deferentially hunted - and those of men who left too soon.

Write to the author: thierry.fivaz@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Filmcoopi Zurich

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