Stafford Film Theatre – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Pierre Foldes / Canada, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands 2022 / 108 min / Cert 15 / Subtitles

An animated adaptation of stories by Haruki Murakami, from his anthology of the same name. Vignettes about an unambitious bank employee, his frustrated wife and a schizophrenic accountant, interweave in the aftermath of an earthquake. Confronting assorted personal problems, the trio find new meaning in their lives with help from unexpected sources. ‘An invigorating translation of prose to the animated form’ Sight and Sound. And the Guardian notes that “It has the ruminative lightness, almost weightlessness, the watercolour delicacy and reticence of the emotions, the sense of the uncanny, the insistent play of erotic possibility and that Murakami keynote: a cat.”