The Mourning Forest (2007, Naomi Kawase) 48
I never really bought the central relationship between the two grievers and that they would be drawn to each other and eventually to their adventure and so, while I admired the photography and the way Kawase sought to express her characters' sadness, I never felt much resonance from their emotional outpourings. Also, I am not convinced that mourning is an interesting enough note to play at such a deliberate pace and with such little variation (both characters get to express a variety of emotion, but they are always just negotiating with their loss). Kawase seems worthy of future investigation though, so I will probably look at Shara sometime in the immediate future.