"The Whispering Star" strikes at first thanks to an unexpected austerity and elegance that set it apart from Sion Sono's most known repertoire. The film follows android Yoko Suzuki's daily life as she travels through space to deliver packages. Despite teleportation technology being available, humans still prefer to spend years, sometimes decades, for their deliveries, as the wait is what makes the items special. The nostalgic mood suggests that people eventually rejected modern technologies to retain their emotions and humanity. Yoko's spacecraft looks like an old Japanese house, and all the technology we get to see is retro to say the least (tape recorders, dry cell batteries, gramophones). A strange emphasis is also put on sound: for example, while the sand under an old woman's fingers is loud as hell, the waves crashing against the shore seem to make no sound at all. On some planets, humans became their own shadows, and cannot survive any sound that is louder than 30 decibels.

The concept is definitely interesting, but I wonder if it was enough for a full-length feature film. Most of the running time is spent with Yoko silently walking across post-apocalyptic landscapes and repeating the same chores all over again inside the spacecraft. Even though these scenes help the viewer feel the monotony and lose the perception of time just like Yoko, I don't think the payoff was worth the patience. Sure the sepia cinematography is gorgeous, and there are a few highly poetic moments here and there, but sometimes it gets tough to keep the focus on the film rather than your grocery list.

It's a contemplative work that cherishes fading memories and reflects on what it is to be human, but a short might have been more than enough to convey the same meaning.