On September 7, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest film, Look Back, premiered in the main competition section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
Based on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s short manga of the same name, the live-action adaptation stars Natsuki Deguchi and Aju Makita. It follows two young girls, Fujino and Kyomoto, who are polar opposites in personality but come together through their shared love for manga. As they collaborate creatively, they gradually become indispensable to one another. The story traces their growth over time, weaving together friendship, artistic ambition, and a sudden tragedy. In 2024, an animated adaptation of the same source material was released in mainland China, drawing widespread tears from audiences with its delicate yet intensely emotional storytelling.
On the festival schedule, Look Back and Lee Chang-dong’s latest film, The Possible Love, were shown on consecutive days. This marks the first time since their 2018 Cannes Palme d’Or showdown—Burning versus Shoplifters—that Kore-eda and Lee have gone head-to-head again in a major international festival’s main competition. But if Burning and Shoplifters were once evenly matched works, the gap in execution between their new films this time is far more pronounced.
On the professional review aggregation site Metacritic, Look Back currently holds a score of 73, while The Possible Love sits at 96.
As a live-action film, Look Back is remarkably mediocre. Nearly everything that made the animated original so compelling has been smoothed over in the adaptation. The kinetic energy of the animation, the sharp, compact twists of the short manga, and the delicate yet potent emotional bond between the two girls—none of it translates effectively into live-action cinema. The animated version ran just 62 minutes—a lean, fluid story that never relied on plot mechanics to begin with. The live-action adaptation stretches that to 100 minutes, resulting in a sluggish, rhythmless affair.
What’s more disappointing is that Kore-eda fails to establish a cinematic language of his own in this live-action retelling. A great many shots merely transplant the original manga’s compositions and narrative beats verbatim. Some of the most striking surreal sequences—Fujino running home in the rain after first meeting Kyomoto, or the climactic moment when Fujino delivers a flying kick to save her—fall utterly flat in live-action. The tension that the animation once achieved through drawing, motion, and pacing is almost entirely absent here.
In this sense, the film neither leverages the possibilities unique to live-action cinema nor offers a genuine adaptation. The plot structure, character dynamics, and even the sequence of events remain largely identical to the source material. The essence of the original is never re-translated; instead, it loses its power in the very act of being copied wholesale. This feels less like an adaptation and more like a rote replica.
There are generally two valid justifications for adapting an animation into live-action: one is commercial exploitation aimed at existing fans; the other is to use live-action’s specific strengths to achieve what animation or manga cannot easily convey. Look Back fits neither. What made the original truly moving was its emotional interplay between creation, friendship, and trauma. This live-action version neither develops a new cinematic vocabulary nor genuinely reworks the source material—it is merely a stiff repeat, one that might even be described as diluting the essence while preserving the superficial.
The film ultimately returns to an animated-style sequence: the two girls standing on a cloud platform, soaring into the sky. This moment, presumably meant to carry the emotional crescendo, instead only underscores how unnecessary the live-action treatment was. If the most important emotional payoff still relies on an animated conceit to land, then the preceding 95 minutes of live-action narrative feel all the more drawn-out—and all the more revealing of the adaptation’s inherent awkwardness.
The two leads do little to salvage the film. Their performances come across as stiff and deliberate, lacking any real spark of character. There is a persistent sense that they are trying too hard to signal to the audience: “Look, I’m cute; look, I’m trying; look, I’m moved.” As a result, the natural, organic bond between the two girls that worked so well in the original feels forced and contrived in the live-action version.
Compared to Sheep in a Box—which received the second-lowest score in the Screen International critics’ poll at Cannes—Look Back at least tells a coherent, logical story. But that is about all it does. And that story, after all, is not Kore-eda’s own creation but Fujimoto’s. Audiences may still find themselves shedding tears during the screening, but the tear-jerking effect increasingly feels like a calculated device—almost a form of emotional manipulation that manufactures sentiment rather than allowing feelings to arise naturally and reach the viewer organically. Even this calculated tugging cannot quite match the emotional force of the original animation.
From Sheep in a Box to Look Back, the Palme d’Or-winning director has delivered two films selected for main competition at major festivals within a single year. Yet in terms of execution, the returns are increasingly underwhelming. How should we approach new works from established directors? And should we accept that a filmmaker may have already passed their creative prime? Through Kore-eda, these have become questions worth continuing to reflect on.
