8thSin
Highly recommended film for all those who liked "Heavenly Forest".Ryou (Narumi Riko) is a girl isolated by everyone else in her class, she doesn't even have a cell phone because no one would call her anyway. One day, she suddenly starts hearing voices of Shinya (Koide Keisuke), who lives in a different prefecture. Kimi ni Shika Kikoenai (literally "Only You Can Hear Me") is a fantasy film about the long-distance love between these two characters through telepathy. I have seen both "How to Become Myself" and "Shindo", but Narumi Riko is by far the most beautiful in this one. Her acting in this was up to par as well. She's the most promising actress in Japan in my opinion. This is a very well-directed film, though I thought the cinematography was a bit too dreamy thus unrealistic. One other thing I disliked about this film was the fact that the whole telepathy thing worked EXACTLY like cell phones. Ringing and "hanging up" was totally unnecessary that only made the whole concept cheesy. Even if there was such thing as telepathy, it would never work like that. What I love most about this film is that there are so many twists. First, you think it's a magical cell phone, but turns out to be telepathy. Then Shinya turns out to be deaf-mute. Then "Harada" turns out to be Ryou herself from the future (although I figured this out when I saw the accident), and the sign language message at death... This movie had a fantastic story. The ending theme song by DREAMS COME TRUE was absolutely fantastic. Although this is not the best DCT song I've heard before, it was a great song written specifically for this movie. Those lyrics really hit me in the end, and although I didn't cry during the movie, the theme song made me reflect the whole story and made me teary. This was a film that really had a kick in the very end. I'm sure I will like this movie more and more as I re-watch it.
