Review: Small, Slow but Steady
- BERLINALE 2022: In co-production with France, Japan’s Shô Miyake carves out a seemingly modest yet subtle and masterful movie about a young, deaf female boxer with a big heart
![Review: Small, Slow but Steady](imgCache/2022/02/03/1643884618624_0620x0413_0x18x1000x666_1679269750473.jpg)
"In time, even the tiniest drop of water can bore its way through stone." Learning to control our emotions when the environment around us proves to be a hotbed for perilous misunderstandings, finding our footing and our centre of gravity, reconciling a desire for victory with respect for our opponents… For young, deaf boxer Keiko, the moving protagonist in Shô Miyake’s fiction film (based on a true story) Small, Slow but Steady [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was unveiled in the 72nd Berlinale’s Encounters competition, it’s anything but easy to reconcile her deep, inner world - which sees her focused on and withdrawn inside of herself on account of her disability - with the wider world (and the crepuscular context of the pandemic), but it’s this very struggle which gives rise to a connection and possibility for happiness, as well as acceptation and a proper understanding of her place in the river of life.
It’s a sport-themed initiatory process which the eclectic Japanese filmmaker (discovered in competition in Locarno 2012 via Playback, and previously showcased in Berlin’s Forum line-up in 2019 via And Your Bird Can Sing; he also tried his hand at a musical documentary in the form of The Cockpit in 2015 and at a series in 2020 named Ju-on: Origins) broaches with highly sophisticated minimalism, under the banner of intimacy and sensitivity, and with a seemingly modest narrative approach which deftly conceals an accumulation of small yet evocative elements, all of which (enveloped in the sublime light of Super 16 film) runs totally counter to the usual rhetoric of boxing movies.
Punctuated by the repetitive toing and froing (punching bag, bodybuilding, punching ball, different combinations in the ring, "shadow boxing", etc.) involved in Keiko’s training (rising star Yukino Kishii who dazzles in this role) in a small, historic gym (the oldest in Tokyo) run by Katsumi Sasaki (Tomokazu Miura), which is at risk of closing having been abandoned by its members (made worse by the state of emergency brought about by the pandemic, since the story begins in December 2020), the film delves deep into the daily life of this young 20-year-old woman, who has only just turned professional and is preparing for her next fight while working as a cleaner in a hotel and sharing an apartment with her brother (who makes music).
While subtly conveying the ongoing delay which Keiko lives with as a result of her disability (and the burden of her past, having been bullied at school), the director also subtly introduces various other elements: the passing of time and the double-edged sword of death (Katsumi’s illness, after being exposed to too much radiation; the gym which is forced to close its doors), family, the passing on of knowledge (lessons delivered between master and student), the difficulty of synchronising and harmonising body and mind... Directed by Shô Miyake in an intentionally contained style which places an emphasis on looks, smalls gestures, sounds and calm tempos, Small, Slow but Steady paints a stripped back, miniature portrait with a restrained aesthetic, which flirts with an opaqueness on a par with the lead character’s personality (which is nonetheless highly likeable). But the movie’s countless echoes, dotted throughout the film with great finesse, also offer up some broader yet incredibly in-depth and cryptic interpretations on the subject of human beings, the new world and the old.
Produced by Nagoya Broadcasting Network and Keiko me wo sumasete Production, in co-production with French firm Comme des Cinémas, Small, Slow but Steady is sold worldwide by Charades.
(Translated from French)
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