The Colors Within/Kimi no Iro is concentrated sweetness and transcendent performance
Her direction is natural, intimate, soft, gentle and sweet like a hand cradling your chin. She makes you feel like you are physically sharing the same space as the characters. It’s no surprise that her works have forged some pretty intense connections with their viewers.
I might’ve been the wrong guy to see the new Naoko Yamada film, but today you’re stuck with me.
I bounced right off K-On and the “cute girls doing cute things” genre in general, and as such I missed the rest of her work at Kyoto Animation. A Silent Voice was almost too much for me to read as a comic; I didn’t want to relive that pain in a movie theater.
But just because one nerd like me missed a lot of her work doesn’t mean Yamada’s immense talent was ever in question. Her direction is natural, intimate, soft, gentle and sweet like a hand cradling your chin. She makes you feel like you are physically sharing the same space as the characters. It’s no surprise that her works have forged some pretty intense connections with their viewers.
And so it was when I watched The Colors Within (Kimi no Iro). I was won over from frame one by this extremely charming story of repressed teenagers starting a band and learning to let their true selves out. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement, don’t miss seeing this movie in a theater when it comes out this week: it’s not going to be the same at home.
