NORWEGIAN WOOD no stars

NORWEGIAN WOOD is a tale of amour fou or whatever the Japanese equivalent is. It's very well acted by its young cast, directed with a great deal of fidelity and imagination by Tran Anh Hung and beautifully photographed by Mark Lee Ping Bin but it also moves at a snail's pace and it seems to last forever (well, 130 or so very long minutes). It's taken from a highly acclaimed novel by Haruki Murakami and I'm sure it's the kind of film that will appeal to young intellectuals who think that talking about sex a lot is 'cool', but then it's also set in 1968, a time when 'the sexual revolution' was at its height which might explain the relative sexual honesty but hardly excuses the film's slowness. Indeed, it's the kind of art-house movie Woody Allen might have taken the piss out of once upon a time and as it wound down to its grim conclusion I kept thinking what the Monty Python team might have done with this material.