Rena Tanaka plays Satoka, a teenage girl who finds a long ago love letter written to her sick mom (not written by her father), a first love she didn't know about. She sets out to find this person, first traveling pretty far to find he has moved to Tokyo. She tracks him down and tries to get him to see her mom, who spends most of this film in the hospital. This kind of film rises and falls on the strength of the main character, and Ms. Tanaka does a great job. You look into her eyes and see many things, happiness, pain etc. You understand the motivations of her character, even if sometimes you question them yourself. The film is a meditation on family, love and what might have been. Its sentimental and it'll move you. I think Ms. Tanaka did a great job, she carried the film admirably. I'd recommend this film for anyone who likes this brand of sentiment in films. Its absorbing throughout.
Add a Review
-
crossbow010629 May 2008
-
mononoke117 November 2004This is a film about a teenager, unable to express herself clearly, learning a lesson in life and through that mending the relationship with her father.
Prior to entering hospital treatment, Satoka's mother is reminded of the tune of an old musical box. Going through her old possessions she finds the box, but not the key. Satoka finds the key, opens the box and discovers a letter to her mothers first love that was never sent. In it her mother wishes to see Fujiki (Sanada of Twilight Samurai fame) one more time beneath the wishing cherry tree. Satoka eventually tracks down Fujiki who turns out to have let himself go. The film focuses on the relationship between Satoka and Fujiki as she attempts to engineer a meeting between the two under the wishing cherry tree.
The film parallels the growing closeness between the surrogate father figure who may be run down but has a spark in him, compared with the deteriorating one with her real father who she sees as a loser. The scenes between Satoka and Fujiki are quite touching as she helps him to connect with reality and bring him out of his shell, while she learns from him how to relate to older men and temporarily forgets her mothers illness.
As with many Japanese films of this ilk (probably not filmed with the art house circuit in mind or by a particularly well known director), the film is highly sentimentalised and at times the pace is very slow. The imagery (linked with the central theme) is also extremely common: falling sakura (cherry blossoms). If you don't already know, sakura is a metaphor for temporality. Just as it reaches its most beautiful moment, it dies and falls as petals. This instant of beauty also contains the moment of death: a theme regularly featured in Japanese literature, films and music. However it is worth staying to the end just to find out how the meeting turns out. How will the pair react to meeting their first love after all these years? And just like with many people, they still feel the pangs and wonder why it went wrong, and think what if ....