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Requiem for a Dream, Lilya 4-Ever or even the extreme Slaughtered Vomit Dolls... The list of films that have plunged us into the bleakness of the lives of prostitutes could be long and would include many works that have come up with creative formal ways to grasp this extensive subject matter. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of A Far Shore, the feature debut of Japanese director Masaaki Kudo. He discusses a serious topic in the most shallow and literal way, and although he does nothing outright wrong, he does not excel at anything. It does have the wit and a certain enigmatic quality of Japanese cinema, but we follow a routine template where exactly what we expect from the first minutes happens. The film has some very nice shots and tries for a symbolic ending, with the ocean tide cleansing a severely tested young mother and her two-year-old son. Otherwise, however, it feels as if Kudo has seen several famous Hollywood films and compiled them into a universal muster, which he simply skims over and adds no personal value. And this applies to both the vacuous dialogue and the dysfunctional balance between the attempt at a more poetic approach on the one hand and naturalism on the other. A few decent nudes certainly don't simulate the journey to hell that the seventeen-year-old protagonist Aoi is about to experience. With a bit of cynicism, one could even write that the biggest positive is that such a dull film could give potential aspiring filmmakers the courage to realize their own festival projects. (2022.07.18)