Film Review: Little Forest Summer/Autumn/Winter/Spring

Review

Little Forest is a drama directed by Jun'ichi Mori, and like many other Japanese films, it is a live-action adaptation of a manga by the same name written by Daisuke Igarashi. The film stars young actress Ai Hashimoto in the role of Ichiko and is shot over two films that are divided into four different seasons, Summer and Autumn for the first film, Winter and Spring for the second.

Ichiko is a young girl who lives in the beautiful Japanese countryside and spends her days hard at work in the fields and neighboring areas plucking weeds, planting rice and/or various fruits and vegetables and attending to a variety of other chores. When she's not spending her time working, she's in the kitchen cooking, creating sensational dishes with the very produce that she helped collect and grow. At the film's core is the concept of food, as viewers are treated to an incredible series of cooking sequences throughout the two films.

Ichiko creates everything from homemade Nutella with hazelnuts picked from nearby trees, to a special drink made from rice grown in the fields. The film wonderfully transitions and creates a fluid interplay between the hard work performed to secure the raw ingredients to the creation of the delicious, rewarding meals and deserts. But underlying the calm pace and surface-level aesthetic is a certain degree of mystery, as various scenes are strategically placed to show that the peace comes from a backdrop of a previous life that seems to have been left behind, as well as a mother who passed on her culinary knowledge to her daughter, but seems absent in the present day.

Despite this, Little Forest never seems to lose its relaxed and thoughtful tone. The film rewards viewers with a great feeling of calm, with a pace and score that makes one want to screen the film outside with a light breeze, amazing sunshine and a cold drink. Mori captures the magnificence of the countryside with incredible cinematography and skillfully edits the cooking scenes to give it an unparalleled level of vibrancy.

The film perhaps loses a little bit of its pace as it moves to the sequel, and one may feel, as I did, that there wasn't a satisfying level of closure for the mysteries mentioned earlier, but aside from this, Little Forest creates an easy watching experience that grants far more accessibility than some of the other Japanese films that I have reviewed so far, which fell on the more violent side of the aesthetic spectrum. The film is an absolute must-watch for foodies, but even the casual kitchen cook will find it hard to not find some level of inspiration by the dishes made.

The film is one of the rare breeds that do more than just act as a simple visual medium of entertainment, but will also educate on how certain dishes are made and the amazing science behind cooking as a whole. Get comfortable and enjoy. Happy viewing J.

More Info:

Website where you can find the films:
Little Forest: Summer/Autumn
Little Forest: Winter/Spring

Score: AA

Out of 10: 8