Egoist (2022)

Beautifully Executed Story

Typical questio. if thus is a Boylove movie is best answered by looking up the meaning of boylove. This is a true story adapted to films telling the story of a contented gay man. No hard dramas about being gay, just the natural everyday life and then meeting a person who will be then so important to him that he did everything he thought he could to help.

The camera work is raw but appropriate in making an impact on the story being told. The artists were all excellent in conveying the role of their character. Even the supporting casts were so natural that it gave a fake sense that you are part of the scene filming their get together.
The sad ending is unavoidable since this is a true story. The writer of this film already passed away from Covid sadly.
this is a beautiful work that I highly recommend for all (whatever gender pref, religion, nationality) to watch.
Keep an open mind and watch and read captions carefully not to miss anything that is connected to the story and will help clarify things for you.

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Not as Intense as I wanted it to be.

I am only adding my voice to this movie because I recently watched Ryohei Suzuki at the NYAFF say he was curious about what we thought about this movie (good things & bad things) and i appreciated that he said that. So these are my thoughts and views.

The Egoist was kind of average, for me even the love story was somewhat unremarkable, maybe because less time was spent on the development of the romance between the MLs. Was it real love or transactional love?,from the novel we know it was real love but from the movie it was not so clear. At times I found Suzuki Ryohei's mannerisms a little too much and are stereotypical of "gay people". His hands moved but his body looked stiff,I would have to say the way Ryohei crossed his legs and sat on the couch and tried to be affectionate just came off as stiff and forced IMO. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't that convincing to me either.Their love scenes were very hot, but I feel like I needed more emotional depth, by exploring why he felt so lonely in this world before Ryuta and just how Ryuta influenced his life. Everything felt rushed.

The most memorable thing for me from the movie, were the conversations that he had with his circle of friends talking about being gay in Japan. My best moment being when t the other friends confess that they went to collect a marriage registration form and filled it out, though same-sex marriage is not legal in Japan. That act of rebellion was memorable for me.

Overall , Dear Tenant and Eternal Yesterday actually came to my mind when watching the Egoist. But both DT and EY were very persuasive in their execution and emotional story-telling in my opinion. They all revolve around love,death and unintentional family, learning to say goodbye to those who have left, some unresolved grief.

DT and Egoist share the same themes of love,death and unintentional family bond that involved the mother of the partner. Though DT has wider family dynamic issues (uncle,child of partner etc). Both partners pass away and the other partner becomes a sort of replacement son for the mother-in-law (for the lack of a better word) with differing degrees of sadness and success. Both bonds are formed either by guilt or kinship for the shared dead partner of the mother. At the heart of both stories is the concept of family & the question of what is family?.

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The Second Half Is Worth The Watch

This was one that surprised me. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. It was definitely a tale of two halves. It almost seemed like each half was created by two different directors as they were so contrasting in tone, style, depth and cinematography. I’ll be honest, if I had watched the first half only, this would have gone on my list of bls that I watched and never thought of again. But the second half packed a punch. It’s the better half. It’s tragically beautiful and I’m so surprised I came away feeling hopeful, despite the bitter and painful things unfolding on screen. There was so much beauty in the relationship between the lead and the mother of his dead partner. So much beauty in uncovering that the dead partner truly loved him. So much beauty in the bonds forged through pain. I recommend this movie whenever I can because I don’t think many people watch it long enough to get to the second half - which is where it shines.

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Oh dear….

I have so much to say about this but I truly do not know how to put my thoughts into words without it becoming a tangent so I’m gonna try my best.

Someone described it has a proper queer movie & I could not agree more! It had everything you could ask for…passion..angst…EVERYTHING!

I started off the movie gutted I hadn’t watch it a lot sooner…if only I had remembered why I initially didn’t watch it the first time it was on my radar…If only.

It’s honestly been a while since a queer movie moved me - or got a reaction this did out of me…I literally bawled my eyes out (non stop) in the remaining half of the movie.

I do have to say I went in blind not fully reading the synopsis due to the fact that many synopsis on here tend to contain spoilers, then about 5 minutes in I thought to come back and read it properly. While the thought of something tragic happening did cross my mind. I was not expecting what I got cause I thought ‘gone are the days of queer cinema with sad endings’…..How naive I was.

Lastly, I know this is fictional - but, Kosuke was definitely a godsend to that family and I could not help but hurt for him.

The cast did a fantastic job portraying these nuance characters. We need more of this in Asian queer cinema…of course with more happy endings.

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An eye-catching Japanese film, winner and nominee at several film festivals, in which we see the range in which the Japanese are capable of shooting. Once sultry, renunciation, heartless and here completely different. I didn't mind anything about the picture, on the contrary, the camera, the processing and the story itself. Everything has already been written, I'll just add that I was completely captivated by his likeable appearance of forty-year-old Suzuki Ryohei (Kosuke), who played his role perfectly, and the character and actress of the mother appealed to me a lot. A beautiful Japanese piece about life, love, responsibility...

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