Each generation has its own way of telling love stories on the screen. What is supremely romantic to one strikes the next as supremely corny (until it begins to fondlylook back, as Meg Ryan's character does in "Sleepless in Seattle," at "An Affair to Remember" and other genre classics).
In "Shady Grove," a film about a young woman's obsessive pursuit of a lover who has abandoned her, Shinji Aoyama seems to be pushing the envelope of the new. Instead of soaring strings, he uses composer Isao Yamada's ambient grooves. Instead of hot, gaudy Technicolor, he prefers the soft, muted shades of cinematographer Masaki Tamura, captured with that trendiest of tools for the zero-budget indie filmmaker, the digital camcorder.
But as cutting edge as a love story may strive to be, it is still going to follow certain narrative arcs that have been hard-wired into movies since Lillian Gish was trudging through snowdrifts in "Way Down East."