With BEFORE WE VANISH, the prolific Kiyoshi Kurosawa has a new film -- one of his best -- opening in theaters

With 48 directorial credits (beginning in 1975), Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose movie, Daguerrotype, only recently opened here, already has another one hitting theaters this week. Better yet, his new alien-invasion-like-you've-never-seen-it sci-fi/thriller/comedy/drama, BEFORE WE VANISH, may well be one of his best ever. More surprising (to TrustMovies, at least) is how very poignant and moving it turns out to be.

Mr. Kurosawa, shown at left, though he has made nearly 50 films, has had only seven of these (to my knowledge) released here in the U.S. Of those, I've found Dagguerrotype the least enthralling and Before We Vanish the most.

The film is a kind of alien-invasion movie as seen through the view of only three of these aliens -- you might call them "scouts" -- whose job it is to assess the human population and gather what information they can from that populace before the real invasion begins and all human life is destroyed.

As directed by Kurosawa with a screenplay adapted (from the play by Tomohiro Maekawa) by the director and Sachiko Tanaka, the movie immediately dumps us into the middle of things as we see a man in a hospital, recovering from an accident and attended by his wife. Concurrently, a young girl comes home from school to suddenly massacre her family and leave some other very odd damage in her wake. A third young man (below, right), wandering the street, picks up a human journalist (below, left) we've only just met to be his "guide."

Yes, these are our three aliens, each of whom has taken over a human body (a nod, without pod, to Invasion of the Body Snatchers) and it is through them -- along with the several humans with whom they come in contact and interact -- that we come to understand who they are and what they want.  Kurosawa is best-know for his nerve-jangling supernatural thrillers in which much of the scares come via indirection, surprise and sheer creepiness (the perfectly titled Creepy is one of his most effective), but here this talented filmmaker instead uses the scenario to explore another famous sci-fi trope used in films from well prior to the original Blade Runner to its recent woeful follow-up: What does it mean to be human?

For my money Kurosawa and company do the best job so far of bringing this particular theme to grand, moving and even very funny life. The two younger aliens are brought to life well enough that we can glean a good deal of info about their "alien" character, one quite different from the other, and we come to understand and appreciate that cynical human journalist quite well, too.

But the character who really nails this movie belongs to that third alien, the young man (above, left) who we first see in the hospital, along with his human wife (above, center). As a human, prior to his being "taken," our guy was evidently something of a rotter: a caddish player who treated his wife like trash. Now only his very attractive shell is left, inside of which resides a being who wants to learn all it can about humans and their lives.

How this comes to be changes everything, and the journey that our very odd "hero" and his wife take, along with that journalist and a few other hangers-on makes for one of the most unusual, often amusing, and finally utterly moving and thought-provoking trips that alien-invasion movies have so far given us.

Our aliens have the ability, as above, to draw out of us humans the "concepts" they want to understand. Things such as "work" and "play" and, yes, "love." How the removal of such concepts leaves the humans provides some of the more amusing moments in the film, but how these work on the aliens makes for even more confusion and surprise.

Kurosawa has larded his movie with a little gore, violence and action occasionally, yet special effects are kept to a minimum. (Has a small budget ever achieved quite this large a movie?!) What holds us are the ideas and the wonderful subtlety with which the filmmaker works. How well he achieves this can be ascertained by how almost shockingly believable the movie is. You buy it, hook, line and sinker. This is also thanks to the marvelous performances from his well-chosen cast: Masami Nagasawa as the wife, Hiroki Hasegawa as the journalist, and especially Ryûhei Matsuda (above and below) as the alien hubby. Mr. Matsuda has a face that is so beautiful yet vacant and pliable, especially in repose (which it most often is here), that he turns this alien into something quite special.

There's a scene maybe two-thirds along that takes place in a church into which the husband has wandered in order to understand the concept of love. Inside a children's choir is singing, and the priest sits with our guy and tries to explain a few things. This may be one of the most perfectly realized bit of sci-fi wonderment ever seen, and it changes the course of the film. Though the concept may be Christian, I am quite certain both Buddha and Mohammed would appreciate it equally well. Moses? With his stern commandments rather than Jesus' loving beatitudes, maybe not so much. But then the Jews are still waiting for their Messiah. In any case, this is a less a religious movie than a humane one.

I find it odd that, with all the supposed triumph-of-the-human-spirit movies made these days (many of them sentimental, silly hogwash), it would take an alien invasion film to truly (and so quietly!) make this theme resonate.

From NEON's new boutique label SUPER LTD, Before We Vanish opens this Friday, February 2, in New York City at the IFC Center and will then play a number of Alamo Drafthouse theaters throughout the country. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates and/or to find a theater maybe near you. If you can't find this film in a movie house, at least stick it on your list for future streaming, DVD or Blu-ray viewing. It is simply too good to miss.

DAGUERROTYPE finds chiller-master Kiyoshi Kurosawa filming (and fumbling) in French

Some of TrustMovies' favorite chiller films have come from Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who has given us, over the years, Cure, Pulse, the recent (and perfectly titled) Creepy, as well as genre-jumping wonders such as Bright Future and Tokyo Sonata. In his latest to reach our shores -- DAGUERROTYPE (known originally as Le secret de la chambre noire) -- the filmmaker is working beyond his usual Asian locations and in the French language (the filming, I believe, was done in Belgium), and as is often case when filmmakers work in a language other than their first -- see Olivier Assayas' Clean or Personal Shopper for further proof, or especially Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of  a Sacred Deer, which I will cover whenever its distributor sees fit to open it here in South Florida -- the results can be pretty iffy.

Kurosawa's dialog (the filmmaker is pictured at left) has never been what the viewer remembers best, in any case, as his visuals -- usually as subtle as they are chilling, with masterful camera movement -- pull us in and hold us fast.

This is true again here, too, except this time his film moves exceedingly slowly and is freighted with a plot so utterly manufactured and full of coincidence and nonsensical behavior that we hold on only for those occasional but very impressive visuals. As usual, what Kurosawa chooses not to show us is often as meaningful and impressive as what we actually see.

Not being nearly as familiar with as many Asian actors as I am the western variety, I must say that the filmmaker has assembled a crack cast to perform his little divertissement. His star is that remarkable French actor Tahar Rahim (shown above and below, right), who broke through to international acclaim in 2009's A Prophet, has now amassed 25 movie/TV credits, and in the ten films I've seen has never given less than a sterling performance.

Rahim possesses a remarkably beautiful, sculpted face that expresses much yet seems to do very little in the process. I don't know that he has ever had an unbelievable moment on-screen, and his innate sensuality/sexuality is such that it spills over into everything he does without being at all "pushy." If you have not seen his lovely turn in Heal the Living (now streamable on Netflix), you really must.

His co-star here is the pert and delicate Constance Rousseau, above, whom I've seen a few times previously but never in a role as large as this one. She and Rahim make a fine pair; their chemistry is good, even if their dialog is generally so-so.

The movie's third wheel is that fine Belgian actor Olivier Gourmet, shown above, right, with yes, the great Mathieu Amalric, at left, who does a mere walk-on in the film. Here, as he often does, Gourmet seems to personify a "walking, talking frown." He plays the Rousseau character's unhinged father, an old-fashioned daguerrotype photographer who used to be a hotshot fashion fellow, but upon the death of his wife, seems to have gone round-the-bend. Gourmet has a single scene in which he is allowed to behave and emote a bit, and he's terrific, as ever. Otherwise, he is condemned to that movie hell reserved for actors working with directors of a foreign tongue.

It is Gourmet's hiring of Rahim that sets the would-be plot in motion, as the younger man learns some of the trade of the older, while beginning a relationship with the daughter. Botany and French real estate (along with its burgeoning value) figure into film's later development, and more silliness ensues. Daguerrotype is never in the least frightening nor chilling, even given its many nods to death and ghosts. Further, its love story seems paltry, despite the efforts of its two stars. I admit to being happy to have seen the film, however, if only for a few precious visual moments. It's a rare Kurasawa miss, nonetheless.

The best thing about the film, in fact, would be its lovely poster image (shown at top), which turns out to be cribbed from the still above and then colorized to make a certain point. (That point actually gives away the single surprise this movie has up its sleeve, and even that surprise should be obvious early on to those viewers who have seen more than a handful of films in their life.) From Under the Milky Way, in French with English subtitles and running an unconscionably lengthy two hours and twelve minutes, the movie arrives on VOD nationwide on Tuesday, November 7, on all major platforms including iTunes, Sony, Google Play, Amazon, Microsoft, Vudu, Comcast, Charter, Cox, Vimeo, and various other cable operators.