The Cinematheque

“One of Obayashi’s breeziest features, filled with a sense of old school Hollywood romanticism, The Island Closest to Heaven forms an affecting portrait of a young girl’s journey to self-discovery.”

Japan Society (New York)

Following up on the success of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, director Obayashi Nobuhiko and idol Harada Tomoyo reteamed for this minor-key voyage, in which sunny tourism provides cover for the harder-to-define process of discovery in the wake of loss. All that teenager Mari has left of her father (Takahashi Yukihiro) are memories, particularly one in which he describes the paradisal shores of New Caledonia. She flies there, and quickly abandons her travelling group to find this destination her own way, though not without hearing from a guide or two (one of whom invokes the title phenomenon of Jules Verne’s The Green Ray). With its images, both exoticized and clear-eyed, of Japanese intercultural encounters, The Island Closest to Heaven exists in between an early Obayashi work like Take Me Away! and the mature style of Beijing Watermelon in a way that parallels Mari’s journey: of a young person adrift, unsure, and for this reason closer to self-understanding.

In Japanese, French, English, and Kanak with English subtitles