‘Desert of Namibia’ Review: A Meandering Chronicle of a Listless Japanese Zoomer
variety.comSiddhant Adlakha “Desert of Namibia,” about a caustic 21-year-old Japanese wanderer, embodies its protagonist’s listlessness to a fault.
Director Yôko Yamanaka was still a teenager when she made her debut feature “Amiko” in 2017, a sharply funny high school film with the jagged, quick-cut energy of a YouTube travel vlog.
It marked her as a Gen Z voice to watch. “Desert of Namibia” similarly follows a young woman trying to find herself (aged up to match Yamanaka’s own life experience, seven years later), but it swings stylistically in the opposite direction, holding and zooming for hilariously, sometimes painfully long.
Your mileage may vary, as the film has a tendency to meander off course, but that is exactly its intention. Actress Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic as Kana, a young Tokyo woman hinted to have roots in a different city or country, but the film is often opaque about important details (like the mystery of its title, toward which it provides only elliptical hints).
Read more on variety.com
