Every frame of Paper Moons was drawn in ink on rice paper by a team of nineteen artists working above a noodle shop, and the texture of that labour glows on screen.
The frame does the talking
It would be easy to admire this purely as craft, and the craft is considerable. Every frame has been composed by someone who clearly loves old photographs. But the pleasure lies in how quickly the technique disappears, leaving you alone in the dark with two people who cannot quite say what they mean.
You can almost smell the ink, and you certainly feel the years.
A performance built from small things
Audiences have surprised the industry this year. Mid-budget dramas that studios had written off as streaming filler are holding their screens for weeks, propelled almost entirely by word of mouth. Older cinemagoers are coming back, and they are bringing their adult children with them.
Stay for the credits
The lead performance is built from almost nothing: a half-finished gesture, a laugh that stops a beat early. It is the kind of work that rarely wins awards because it never looks like work. Watch it twice and you will notice how carefully it has been constructed.
If there is a complaint, it concerns the final twenty minutes, which keep tidying things that were more interesting untidied. But a slightly over-eager ending is an easy sin to forgive in a film this generous with its audience and this confident in our attention.
