Evil Does Not Exist at Perth Festival

Ryo Nishikawa (as Hana) in Evil Does Not Exist
Photo Credit: ©️2023 NEOPA, Fictive

On a warmish evening, my partner and I headed to the UWA Somerville to watch the Perth Festival movie Evil Does Not Exist.

I had been drawn to watch this movie – having watched the well known Oscar award winning film Drive my Car by the same Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

The story line revolves around Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his eight year daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), who live in a small village in Japan where locals enjoy the tranquillity of nature and slower paced lifestyle, and reap the benefits of a small community where everyone knows each other and helps out where they can.

Then in come the developers with big plans to set up a glamping site for tourists, and hence the story unfolds as conflict and tensions arise due to community concerns about their water supply.

With gorgeous cinematography capturing nature, along with melancholic music by composer Eiko Ishibashi, this sets the tone for a reflective movie and an interesting story line that brings up the issue of what happens when we disrespect nature ?

A beautifully told story in the typical style of Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, his style of cinematography is crisp and clear, and the story pans smoothly into the action (whether it is admiring the forest in all its beauty up above in the canopy of the trees or panning in to the conversation of two people in an intimate discussion about their inner most thoughts).

Evil Does Not Exist has won numerous awards including Winner of the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Winner of the Best Film at the London Film Festival and Winner of the Jury Grand Prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2023.

It was a very enjoyable evening with Charlies Pizza in hand for our dinner along with a shared tiramisu (the last one left and my favourite!).

Evil Does not Exist is showing at UWA Somerville till this Sunday 17 March.

The Perth Festival movie season at the UWA Somerville will end this month. So if you missed any movies, you may be able to watch one of those films during the second encore week which runs in the week beginning 25 March.

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