A Midsummer's Fantasia (2014) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by oppie ★★★★

  oh to walk around a small town in japan talking about life...

• Review by PlaguDocta ★★★★★

  In eternal honesty and trusting loyalty. There was stories and realities that could possibly been. Granting slices of places within and back to me. Of explosions in the sky.

• Review by SupremeLemon (지존레몬) ★★★★ 1

  I am against cheating, but this is not bad.

• Review by icebear ★★★★½

  a film director goes to gojo, a sleepy town in japan for research. the younger residents have left, leaving mostly only the elders. a melancholy seeps through the film, as the memories of this town will likely disappear soon.

  but by filming what's soon to be lost, the director captures what's so special about the very best of stories: they're only able to happen in a certain time, certain place. our only hope is to be able to grasp these fleeting moments.

• Review by iusti ★★★★

  A dream of walking through the local area, a dream of dreaming romance that travels through memory and space. Like a midsummer night's dream, man and woman break up while hovering around each other's realm.

• Review by jrhovind ★★★★

  Something like Before Sunrise as reimagined by Zhang Lu (the neat bifurcation might even evoke Hong, though with a gentler melancholy ache). The documentary-like first half goes searching for a place – the sleepy town of Gojo, Japan, its younger population increasingly fleeing to the city – and ends up falling in love with the people who still call it home. “Something happens in Gojo, but what’s important is who is in it.” Stories, often delivered directly to the camera, of dreams deferred and life course unexpectedly rerouted and loves lost too soon (“Most houses are empty, and I feel lonely”). A blast of fireworks announces a shift from the travelogue’s dreamy black-and-white to the deeply saturated colors of a…

• Review by Viyan ★★★★★

  I was smiling the whole time and at some point near the end i realized i was crying happy tears.

  Hong Sang-soo wishes he could make something like this.

• Review by yoy ★★★★

  i too, wanna walk around town with my totebag, meet new people, have conversations about life and fall in love in a foreign country

• Review by MrJago ★★★★

  Strangers walking through places is my favourite movie genre.

  The end of this kinda got me...

  From the director of Sleepless Night.

• Review by Avirup ★★★½

  75/100
  
  First half shot in b/w is kind documentary style where a director is visiting a small Japanese town for his film, researching , meeting locals and listening to their stories. Second half shot in colour is that film playing out (or atleast director's imagination of it) . This one is a pretty sweet and sincere vacation romance. Both halves have that calm melancholic feel. Overall it doesn't really go anywhere but structure is interesting, it's beautifully shot, it has some nice moments and a very chilled out vibe. Good watch.

• Review by kc ★★★★★

  vimeo.com/201646909

• Review by chance (승환) ★★★★ 4

  there may be endless meaning found in even the smallest stories remembered. I'll be long yearning for the warm summer days our fates were briefly intertwined, as well as all the uncertainties the future may hold. forever connected under the same sky ~ I hope you don't forget me, but know I shall cherish the moments we shared for as long as memory prevails.

  final watch of may ~ I know it's technically not summer yet, but this felt like a perfect way to welcome in the summertime 💚 also if anyone can please ID the song playing in the bar near the end I would really appreciate it. it sounds so nice, and it's an experience of true pain that I can't figure out what it is 😔