Annecy 2025: The Last Blossom Review
Key Takeaways
- The Last Blossom fights to deliver sincerity in an age where blockbusters often use humor to avoid showing real emotion.
- The culture is caught between wanting sincerity but also being quick to ridicule it when it appears.
- This skating on an irony-infused thin ice becomes a significant undertaking for the animation that yearns for earnestness.
The Witty Chit-Chat
Taking a breather from the relentless wave of irony-laden blockbusters, The Last Blossom attempts a brave leap into the world of sincerity. Talk about being a rare bird in a sky full of copycat drones! Striving to land in the tender area of the heart without causing an eyeroll epidemic, it dives headfirst into the pool of genuine emotions.
But let’s be real, in a world where sarcasm is often our first language and eye-rolling a favourite pastime, how does one get all serious without sounding like an Aesop’s fable? The Last Blossom, more like a sensitive petunia fighting an emotional tussle amid the prickly roses of cynicism and skepticism!
In our ‘heart-on-sleeve yet quick-to-judge’ society, rooting for sincerity can feel like navigating a double-edged sword. Here’s to The Last Blossom for having the courage to be authentically emotional. Not all heroes wear capes, some just put puffy flowers on their sleeves and brave the storm of skepticism! Go, team sincerity!
©Kazuya Konomoto /The Last Blossom Production Committee
Diving into the industrial honesty of The Last Blossom, its challenging task is to project pure emotion in an era where the marked swing toward ironic humour has desensitised us to authenticity. Even so, The Last Blossom takes you on a journey that shatters any cynical predisposition, giving life to unabashed truths about human interaction and our universal quest for meaning.
Main character of The Last Blossom, Minoru, is unraveled gradually, his persona transforming with each scene. We first encounter him on his deathbed in a prison cell, a scene offset by flashbacks to his seemingly average life in 1986 with wife Nana and son Kensuke. A remarkable plot twist reveals the soft-spoken protagonist as a member of the Yakuza dynasty, who took Nana and Kensuke under his protection. Shedding the stereotypical animated character exposition, The Last Blossom treats us to authentic character development seldom seen in children’s narratives.
The emotional dynamics between Minoru, Nana and Kensuke is riveting. Despite his refusal to openly express affection towards them, shared moments speak volumes about his evident love. As we watch Minoru and Nana recreate Ben E. King’s classic ‘Stand By Me’ in their unassuming way, we get a glimpse of Minoru’s vulnerability beneath his stoic demeanor. His deviance from the expected path is a testament to his human reaction to the world around him, rather than inconsistency.
It is through the voice of a balsam flower that the film explores profound existential questions. Symbolizing sagacity, this flower perceives life from Minoru’s deathbed, indulging in moral debates on his life choices. Mirroring the contrast between survivalist strategies of gangsters and plants, the film posits coexistence as the nature’s way, thereby challenging and eventually deconstructing Minoru’s worldview.
© Kazuya Konomoto / The Last Blossom Production Committee
The adaptability required by the ever-evolving Yakuza occupies a central theme too, embodying the philosophy of the balsam flower. The flower challenges the status quo and acts as the focal point of the animation, employing non-verbal expression to personify its aura. This attribute, combined with the immersive 2D art style, make The Last Blossom visually stunning, even in its distressing scenes.
With a storyline reminiscent of Scorsese’s character studies, The Last Blossom is a rare and expertly crafted exploration of a gangster’s life in an animated film. It’s an enthralling blend of a man’s redefinition of masculinity, his relationships, accompanied by a visually appealing narrative that is thought-provoking at its core. The Last Blossom is, undeniably, one of this year’s festival gems.
Original article: https://www.skwigly.co.uk/annecy-2025-the-last-blossom-review/