The rural hamlet Hasagawa is a paradisiacal place to live for single father Takumi. He passes his days pass quietly, chopping wood, hauling well water, helping out his neighbours and forgetting to collect his daughter from school. Despite the strong sense of genius loci, it’s pretty clear that all this simply won’t last forever. The calm of forests, lakes and deer paths is too strong a lure for the city people, who crave this slowness and to unwind in transplanted incongruous ways, like a glamping site, presented by two agents from Tokyo. To the community, the project’s main promise is a dire fallout on their environment.

Opening as a fable of a community standing up for a pristine environment versus a corporate developer, Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist morphs into the re-evaluation of life’s priorities and continues to build a path leading deeper into this arcadia, shifting moods and perspectives. At an unhurried pace, the film offers pieces of the bigger picture, letting curiosity run through details and textures, seemingly translating the musical score by Ishibashi Eiko and quite typically for Hamaguchi, making the process of storytelling a part of the pleasure.

Director: Hamaguchi Ryūsuke

Duration: 106 min

Language: Japanese

Subtitles: English