The true story of the "Phone of the Wind", which this movie is roughly based on, sure is a lovely, extremely moving and interesting one! And the Touhoku Tsunami and all the tragedy and loss that it caused are incredibly touching, of course. Unfortunately, the screenwriter and the director of this "Kaze no Denwa" - Nth victims of what I call "the nefarious influence of 'Cahiers du Cinéma' and Nouvelle Vague" - decided to ruin all that by having the part of the movie about Touhoku and the phonebooth (basically, the last 50', more or less) preceded by almost 90' of mostly useless and painfully boring scenes. Just one example so as not to spoil anything: at the beginning of the movie, the main character takes a ferry; ok, anybody with even just an ounce of respect for the viewers would have simply shot two/three short sequences, and with some editing the scene would have been done (and it would have lasted, like 10 seconds, tops). But here instead they went with an *interminable* sequence shot of her slowly approaching the dock, then waiting for the ferry, then the ferry slowly approaching the dock, then the few people on the dock slowly boarding the ferry, then the ferry finally (and yeah, you guessed it correctly: *SLOWLY*) leaving the dock: 180, *endless* seconds which add *nothing* to the story - quite the opposite, really! >____<
Seriously, the first 80+ minutes could be reduced to 10'/15' tops, keeping only the relevant scenes and cutting all the useless, artsy cr*p...=___=
Too bad...if this story had been written and directed by a decent writer/director team, this could've been a true masterpiece!
As is, it's mostly a yawnfest; and it's such a pity, considering that this story - and all the Tsunami victims and their relatives - would've deserved much more than this, imho! /.___.\