A pale beauty of hills 遠い山なみの光 (25) review
A Pale View of Hills (2025) – A Cinematic Meditation on Memory, Time, and Regret
There are films that tell a story, and then there are films that unravel one. Kei Ishikawa‘s A Pale View of Hills belongs firmly to the latter category. An adaptation of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1982 debut novel, this is a work of haunting beauty—a film that drifts through memory like mist through mountain valleys, leaving you unsettled, moved, and questioning everything you‘ve just seen.
The Director and His Vision
Ishikawa, who previously helmed the acclaimed A Man (which swept eight Japanese Academy Awards including Best Picture), brings a refined, almost literary sensibility to the screen. He wrote, directed, and edited the adaptation himself, and even secured Ishiguro himself as executive producer. The result is a film that feels faithful in spirit while forging its own cinematic identity. Premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section, it signals Ishikawa as a major international voice in cinema.
The Story: A Widow‘s Fragmented Memories
The plot follows Etsuko, a Japanese widow now living in 1980s England. Her daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko), an aspiring journalist, presses her to recall their family’s past in post-war Nagasaki. Reluctantly, Etsuko’s memories drift back to the summer of 1952, when she was pregnant with her first daughter and living in a city still scarred by the atomic bomb. There, she became drawn to Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido), a mysterious single mother with grand, delusional dreams of moving to America. As the film cuts between these two timelines—1950s Japan and 1980s England—it slowly unravels secrets that blur the line between memory and imagination.
What Impressed Me
This is a visually stunning period piece. The cinematography, by Polish director of photography Piotr Niemyjski (who earned a BIFA nomination for his work here), is exquisite—every frame feels composed like a painting, capturing the quiet devastation of post-war Nagasaki and the muted, melancholic light of suburban England. The landscapes are breathtaking, the direction masterful.
What struck me most, however, was the film‘s exploration of the generational divide. In one scene set in the 1980s, an older character complains that the older generation simply cannot understand that the world is moving forward. Later, in the more recent timeline, the exact same sentiment is echoed between a mother and her daughter. History repeats itself, not as tragedy, but as a stubborn failure to listen across the ages. It’s a quiet, devastating observation about how little we truly learn from those who came before—or after—us.
The Puzzle That Left Me Dizzy
And then there‘s that twist. The film introduces a second, older daughter but only reveals her at the very end. Throughout most of the runtime, we‘re shown the daughter of Etsuko’s friend—only to realise, in the final moments, that this “friend” might have been her daughter all along. Was Sachiko merely a figment of Etsuko‘s imagination? A projection of her own guilt and loss? The film deliberately leaves this ambiguous, and I’ll admit—this riddle genuinely confused me. It‘s the kind of puzzle that lingers long after the credits roll, forcing you to re-examine everything you thought you understood.
The One Frustration
I must be honest: the constant back-and-forth through time—from the 1950s to the 1990s to the present and back again—was exhausting. While I understand it serves the film’s meditation on memory‘s unreliability, the relentless temporal jumps often felt more disorienting than illuminating. It‘s a film that demands your full attention, and even then, it may leave you grasping for solid ground.
Final Verdict: 7/10
For its stunning visuals, its powerful direction, and its brave, unflinching look at how we reshape our pasts to survive our presents, A Pale View of Hills is a film worth experiencing. It’s a quietly heartbreaking meditation on loss, exile, and the stories we tell ourselves. But be prepared: this is not a film that hands you easy answers. It asks you to sit with its ambiguities, to embrace its uncertainties, and to accept that some memories may never fully come into focus.
Ishikawa has crafted something rare—a film that feels like a half-remembered dream. Whether you find that beautiful or frustrating may depend on how comfortable you are with not knowing for certain what is real.
This is not a film for everyone. It only works if you love puzzles that never quite get solved, and if you're comfortable with ambiguity and mental disorientation. If you prefer straightforward storytelling with clear resolutions, you'll probably find it frustrating rather than rewarding
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