Review by gloria wong

Three drunken people are having a few more rounds together after a wedding they’ve all attended when an innocuous party trick leads them to (accidentally) swapping house keys. The makings of great bedroom farce, right? Well, no. This would be What the Heart Craves, the second digital video feature from Takahasi Izumi, the winner of VIFF’s own Dragons & Tigers Award (for The Soup, One Morning). Like Takahasi’s previous effort, What the Heart Craves is a minimalist interrogation of relationships where the keenly observed details (the banal exchanges that wrongly-matched lovers have to avoid making waves, the strangely intimate conversations one can only have with a stranger) are pretty much all you get.

The film follows Kurata, Mukai and Shitara as the consequences of this mix-up unfold. Along the way, we learn that Shitara used to be friends and roommates with Mukai’s girlfriend (the certifiable) Kozue, and that Kurata’s next door neighbour hides at his house whenever her boyfriend beats her (the walls are so thin in these cramped Japanese apartments that light scratching can make your presence known next door). But plot isn’t really much of a concern for this filmmaker - he has tiny but huge things on his mind.

What the Heart Craves
Takahasi Izumi | Japan | 2007 | 98min
Thur. Sept. 25 | 6:00pm | Empire Granville, Theatre 5
Thur. Oct. 2| 12:00pm | Empire Granville, Theatre 5