"Megane" (Glasses) is the story of a professor from the city named Taeko, who takes an off-season vacation to a remote seaside rest house called Hamada. The people in this house include the absent-minded proprietor named Yuji, a local biology teacher named Haruna and a mysterious old woman named Sakura. Will the snooty Taeko also fall under the inexplicable spell of Hamada with its "twilighting", morning exercises at the beach and "the best shaved ice in the world" concocted by Sakura-san? We never really find out anything substantial about any of these characters. Why are they all here? Why do they behave in this strange way? What happened to them before they came here to Hamada? The director and the script do not tell us directly about anything. The dialogs are thrifty on words, but perhaps pregnant with meaning, I do not really know. Maybe these details are not really important at all, as much as what the effect of the place and of Sakura-san on all these other people.This is what I like about Japanese movies. They have a sense of serenity so unique to them. The music was beautiful, especially with the cello and the mandolins. The stark but artistic photography is mesmerizing with the unique blocking of the people and objects in the shots and the magnificent seaside sceneries. I do not think a movie like this could have been successfully done by any other culture.

Some newspaper critics dismissed this as a simplistic new-age fantasy about yuppies that want a break from their hurly-burly city lives. To me they seem to miss the point.I'm one of those people for whom form is much more important than story. Megane is really beautifully shot: the colours, the interiors, the food, the arrangement of the main actors in each frame and the timing of their movements are obviously designed with great care and precision. Yet there is a story here too. It's not very complicated, but beautifully arched and perfectly paced. Like the best of classical music performances, if you make the effort to concentrate and connect you loose track of time and simply enjoy the here and now of the experience. Classical music doesn't 'mean' anything either, or at least it can mean very different things to different persons.The music in Megane, by the way, is often beautiful too (and sometimes downright weird). It doesn't dominate, but subtly supports key moments and adds a little spice. I particularly liked the occasional cello solo.There's little dialog dialog in the film, and the critics are right in saying that it isn't very profound (but occasionally very funny!). Sometimes though, more can be said by two people sitting silently in a quiet spot, watching a sunset and drinking the here and now than by the entire Iliad.

This film is the follow-up to the director's hit "Kamome Shokudo" but where that film succeeded because of its healthy balance of strangeness with beautiful sets, good acting, interesting characters and quirky humor, this film gets only the beautiful sets right and goes WAAAY overboard with the strangeness. A good example of this is the asinine dialog which makes no sense and sounds like each character is having their own conversation with someone off-screen, unaware of the other (onscreen) characters around them.Nothing happens in this movie and there is no exploration into the characters or the environment at all. In fact this movie is nothing more than a glorified screen-saver and would be much better as a slide-show of beautiful scenery, without the stupid characters. Add in some ocean sounds and I would be asleep right away and dreaming of watching a better film.

An easygoing film that is as satisfying as a refreshing sea breeze during a summer night at the beach. Impeccably done and acting that is superbly measured.The location is a small island near Okinawa. White sandy beaches and paradisaical transparent waters. A woman flies in and walks to a guest house near a beach. The place, called Hamada, is not easy to find but she does. It's Spring. Off-season. Hamada is operating but the woman is the only guest. The place is run by a cheery and nononsense man that is also the cook. Other characters include an older enigmatic woman that comes to help and a young teacher at a local school. We don't learn a lot about who these people are. This is fine for it lends a whiff of mystery, especially regarding the older woman.The film is primarily about the transformation of the young woman as she is drawn into the unhurried atmosphere that permeates the island and Hamada. She slowly succumbs to the local habits.Despite its slowness, it is never boring. Plenty of whimsical offbeat humor to keep us going. Also plenty of food on display. By the end I was hungry.