Before Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata, Kore’eda’s Still Walking and Sion Sono’s Noriko’s Dinner Table, there was Toshiaki Toyoda’s Hanging Garden, the film that started it all. Family as a nightmare and a fount of terror, discord and disquiet: that was his idea. A visually stunning and surreal tale of desperate times, in which we feel the pressure of things unspoken rippling through an unusual 20th-century Japanese family, Hanging Garden features an unforgettable gallery of neurotic portraits presided over by a camera that travels with unhindered calm, composure and Toyoda’s incomparable mad auteur style.
