Frederic Boilet has created an amazing work about a French artist living in Japan (like him) and his Japanese girlfriend and muse (apparently like his gal at the time). It's lyrical, beautiful, haunting, and like very little else out there. The art is lovely, photo realistic, and extremely inventive in it's visual storytelling i.e. how the distance from us the viewer (close-up, long shot, etc.,), lighting, and angle of the point of view of each panel works with all of these factors in the panels before it, after it, and on the whole page (whew! For more on this See Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud).
But the story is the real star here. This is another one of the increasingly growing list of graphic novels that someone who's never read one can enjoy to the fullest. It's hard to portray a wonderful relationship without getting maudlin and Boilet shows us a love between two people that is, though not without problems, beautiful.
One last thing -- as beautiful as the art is here, this type of slavish photorealism is becoming tiresome. It seems that anyone with Photoshop can become a comics artist these days whether they know how to draw or not. And artists like Tony Harris and Alex Maleev deprive us of their ample drawing skills by using photo reference in every panel they draw. Rant over.
Buy this and anything by Boilet you can. Highly recommended.
