High / Low
2009 · 12m · France
Directed by Fabien Dubois
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Two brothers move to Tokyo: one participates in a sound-mapping project while the other, disoriented and lonely, turns to alcohol — a Franco-Japanese co-production that won Grand Jury Prize and Best Picture at the Saint-Maur festival.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Dubois makes the bold structural choice to parallel a scientific sound project with an emotional breakdown, and neither thread is metaphor — both are literal, which means the film's resolution has to work on both registers simultaneously. That the ending manages it is the craft win here.
Lost in Translation with a decibel meter. Saint-Maur is not a real festival pedigree, and the sound-mapping metaphor feels like a film school thesis that survived past the thesis. Pretty, probably; essential, no.
Fabien Dubois uses decibel mapping — measuring city sound — as the metaphor for two brothers' opposite responses to Tokyo. Lost in Translation cousin, but the sound-mapping conceit is its own gesture. Saint-Maur Grand Jury earned.
Festivals
- Saint-Maur Festival 2010, Grand Jury Prize, Best Picture