Final Rating: 4/5
River Returns enters the frame like an older family member sharing a story around a campfire. Each sentence is a thread in a tapestry that you might suspect has been embellished. Maybe they have; maybe they haven’t. Masakazu Kaneko’s film, like a cool breeze, is equal parts chilling and soothing.
Roughly half of the film’s runtime follows a folk tale about forbidden love that villagers say causes floods to occur from time to time. Asuka Hanamura as Oyo is a lowly villager—a sedentary class—with large, hopeful eyes. Hanamura’s visage (aided by the makeup artist) gives Oyo spirit-like features, even without the literal ethereal quality her character takes on.
Opposite Hanamura’s Oyo is Yo Aoi as Saku, the other half of the forbidden relationship. Saku is a woodturner. He and his group travel around carving various objects out of wood using a lathe. Like most details in River Returns, the dynamics of the woodturner group are not spelled out. There’s a higher than average amount of work required to decipher the relationships and meanings at play. Director Kaneko pays more attention to the way the film feels, relying on Tatsuya Yamada’s beautiful cinematography and the performances of the actors.
While Aoi’s presence is not as powerful as Hanamura’s, Oyo and Saku are a quaint pair who are easy to root for. The highlight of their fragile relationship comes when Saku shares with Oyo how the lathe works, asking her to pull on the rope that operates it as he carves a bowl. Little is spoken between the two of them, but their lingering glances say everything that needs to be said. This meditative approach—far more present during the folk tale sequences than outside of them—gives its actors (especially Hanamura) plenty of room to emote at the risk of obstructing the flow of the film.
Oyo’s father (Ken Yasuda) tells her that she can marry anyone other than a “nomadic vagabond” like Saku. Woodturners have a reputation for being scavengers who migrate from mountain to mountain and forest to forest, picking it clean of the best wood and moving on when it’s exhausted. Oyo’s father doesn’t want to see her hurt when Saku inevitably leaves.
Kaneko spares no expense making the landscape come alive around his characters. The look and sound of the mountainside is as evocative as Oyo and Saku’s eyes. Part of Saku’s story revolves around him coming to terms with his treatment of the trees. Kaneko makes it clear that while Saku can craft a gorgeous bowl, it’s important that he respects the land that allowed him to create it.
River Returns teases out concrete details slowly with its minimal dialogue. The reason for this becomes clear as the film returns from its detour through the folk tale and the camera firmly sits behind Yucha (Sanetoshi Ariyama, who also plays the role of Oyo’s younger brother). Yucha’s father Harou (Tomomitsu Adachi) desperately works for money by chopping down trees to grow new ones for a construction company—an occupation that mirror’s Saku’s.
Yucha’s mother (Kinuo Yamada) is ill, the impetus behind Harou’s need for money and lack of respect for the surrounding landscape. However, it is Yucha who recognizes and acts on the connection between the past and the present. He resolves to calm Oyo’s spirit to prevent the floods from carrying away the frail thanks to the heavy-handed support of his grandmother (Toshie Negishi).
The final act of the film is Kaneko at his most playful. He seems to be having fun pushing two different stories together until they fuse into one. Concreteness loses all meaning as the worlds of the past and present (1958) intertwine. He leans into the notion that the past is not a fixed point and that it can be altered. How else would one help a grieving spirit finally rest, Kaneko seems to ask, if not by meddling in the events of the past?
Disentangling the characters and threads of River Returns’ tapestry isn’t necessarily the point. After the initial shock, the emotional destination Masakazu Kaneko leads the film to is well worth the journey. The film takes its time to get where it’s going, but never comes across as lost, even if its characters might. Sanetoshi Ariyama, Asuka Hanamura, and Yo Aoi are perfectly cast to ground the elevated qualities of the film enough to keep it from floating away.
River Returns was seen during the 2025 Toronto Japanese Film Festival.
