• Warning: Spoilers
    Most of what happens in this film is implicit and off screen. The director chooses to focus on a few brief encounters and a newly forged, fragile relationship between a call girl and an esteemed, older Sociology professor who lives 1 hour outside of the city. Though seemingly simple, plot-wise, the brilliance and intricacies come to life in our minds long after the film ends.

    The audience isn't provided with a substantial backstory- this is a sliver of time we're exposed to, and we reckon that Akiko is a student who moved to Tokyo and struggled with finances, so she began moonlighting as a call girl after her classes and exams after finding success due to her exceptional, though generic, beauty. She mentions that she often reminds people of others, perhaps her universal familiarity is her allure, allowing her clients to project whatever they want her to be, leaving the real Akiko unfamiliar to everyone including herself- clearly a stranger even to her suspicious (for good reason) and controlling fiancé who we can assume gives the emotionally damaged Akiko some sense of stability in a twisted form of consuming love that she can accept. It's unclear if the relationship was ever good, or if Akiko's compartmentalization and double-life has created the toxic dynamic that exists in the time we're privy to.

    Akiko's pimp sends her to a client old enough to be her grandfather. Formerly a student of this aging Sociology professor, her pimp holds him in high esteem. It's apparent that Akiko seems comfortable immediately with the professor, and undresses soon after she arrives and passes out in his bed. He's patient with her despite her refusal to eat dinner with him which he prepared for her, and silently watches over her as she sleeps. The next morning he takes her to school while she continues to sleep. In our sleep we are the most vulnerable, so these scenes show us the immediate comfort the two feel in each others' presence.

    While he waits for her, he meets Akiko's fiancé who is also waiting for her. Through masterful and cryptic dialogue, the fiancé assumes the professor is Akiko's grandfather. We see what we want to see, seems to be the message the director is insisting on despite very obvious clues that not all is what it seems (ex. Akiko's fiancé has an advertisement with Akiko's photo on it advertising her services, Akiko never mentioned her grandfather visiting, only her grandmother, and her grandfather is a fisherman, not a professor). The ambiguity of their relationship echoes that of Abbas' film 'Certified Copy', where we're not sure what's real, what's pretend, what's a dream, and who's who.

    The abrupt ending literally "shatters" a lot of what we've come to understand in this poetic, soft film. Perhaps making up for the slow beginning and shocking us to our senses, the ending calls into question a much more that happens non diegetically- how did the fiancé find out within the few hours he was denying the truth and now? Is the Professor alright? With so little actually explained in the film, our minds run wild with answers filling in the complex backstories that we personalize.

    All we really understand is that the Professor sees Akiko as familiar because she resembles his wife and granddaughter, and though nothing sexual happens (at least on screen) the nature of their relationship from the outset is of sexual expectations. Perhaps this film is really discussing the innocence of what has darker pretenses on the exterior, while also evaluating the darkness that exists within an innocent exterior (Akiko).