Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: MONONOKE - PHANTOM IN THE RAIN [Fantasia Film Festival 2024 - Montreal, Quebec]

While not being aware of the “Mononoke” fandom as much, at the world premiere of the new theatrical film: “Phantom in The Rain” [World Premiere/Animation Plus], people in the audience seemed to have high hopeS. Sometimes an issue with anime can be the aspect of being so insular to the world that it loses cohesion in terms of being relatable usually because of the big bad. This film does use a bit of a reverse in trying to redirect the audience but it is the background art and ambience of the palace on the big screen that is the real treat. The waiving of clouds and a tattered underlying backdrop are what really sells this as well as an increasing electronic score as the film builds. While “Phantom In The Rain” begins as a search for identity focused on rising star Asa and a not-so-focused handmaiden, the aspect of intention becomes clearer as the jockeying for position becomes more and more pronounced.

But what the writer/director Kenji Nakamura starts to do is make small style elements like swirling graphics on certain women’s faces to add to the eerie mystery of the story. It might simply have been a budget texture but it adds to the eerie message. The 3D imaging inlays at one point with the 2D animation and it works in pinpoint accuracy for the first of a couple sequences with the medicine seller. Howeever, at a certain point, it starts to become a mash of color but Nakamura never loses the lyrical quality of the image. He also never quite retreats to melodrama which is quite remarkable. “Phantom In The Rain” remains cool enough throughout to really relate the metaphorical notion of what the story is. The demon element is almost besides the point though it’s interrelation to the Lord element is uncertain. “Phantom In The Rain” works best when it balances its painterly context with all the other senses so it becomes a moving mosaic which is hard in a would- be summer movie, even if it is more focused on the Asian market. A-

By Tim Wassberg