I like these japanese romances, girls are feminine and people still take love and marriage seriously. In this case a (male) teacher and his student fall for each other and they obviously have to keep it secret. It's a little bit too long but otherwise it was okay.
Add a Review
-
mister_bateman22 August 2020
-
This movie runs it theme in a very sensitive and delicate topic: child grooming and teacher-student romance. Fortunately this was made in Japan. If this was made in America, it would surely ignited chaos.
The plots saves this movie from condemnations. It cleverly navigated through sensitive issues and chose to focus on romantic relationship instead.
Nana Komatsu as Yuni Kururugi, played a believable troubled teenager. Viewers would definitely side with her from the start of the movie. Supporting casts also played very well, although not much screen time for their character development.
Decent 7/10. -
karluk9917 October 2015Yuni Kururugi is a smart and pretty high school student, who is doing well in all of her classes except English. In an attempt to improve her grades her English teacher, Haruka Sakurai, asks Yuni to attend regular after school tutoring sessions. Although she initially resents Mr. Sakurai, she rather quickly develops feelings for him, most notably when he rescues her from bullies who attack her because of jealousy over the extra attention Yuni is getting from the handsome teacher.
At this point the movie has to make a choice between being a realistic story of an influential teacher pushing a bright student to be her best, or diverging into a fantasy world in which an innocent schoolgirl inspires Mr. Sakurai with the most noble and self-sacrificing love that any teenage girl could wish for. In this case fantasy wins, and we spend the rest of the movie seeing how the love between this couple is just so perfect and right that all of the normal objections to a romance between teacher and student simply don't apply.
Given the fact that the movie is sheer fantasy, I find the scene where Mr. Sakurai kisses Yuni while she is hiding in the bottom of his lectern to be quite endearing. Sure, in real life it would be impossible for this to happen in front of the entire class without anybody noticing, but as a fantasy I can sympathize with wanting one's first kiss to be a memorable one, and this scene is nothing if not memorable.
Close Range Love is surprisingly aware of how many legitimate objections there are to a teacher falling in love with a student, but of course none of them apply to Yuni and Mr. Sakurai. He never makes any physical demands on her, so their displays of affection are limited to a few stray hugs and kisses. Adolescents are typically need time to find their place in life, and sure enough, Mr. Sakurai selflessly pretends to break up with Yuni so she has no reason not to pursue her dream of studying abroad. Yuni is devastated by the break up, but is smart enough to figure out later that Mr. Sakurai did it for her and really is still in love with her.
The acting left a lot to be desired, but this is most likely the result of the source material being a manga. Yuni's emotions are always portrayed by quirky mannerisms - touching her ear lobe, eating doughnuts, clutching her skirt in her fist, stroking her cat pin jewelry - so the lack of visible emotion in her face is probably intentional.
All in all, I felt a 5/10 rating was fair. Close Range Love doesn't have a lot of appeal except to people looking for an escapist teenage romance fantasy, but as an escapist teenage romance fantasy it does a decent job. -
xingzhichen18 November 2015Don't care about the trend. All you need to know... It tells a very sweet love story with a happy ending. You will see the most handsome man (don't like the hair style.) and the cutest girl in this movie. Why do we have to worry that the movie is far from the reality? This movie pulls you away from the reality for 2hours, sometimes it is the best thing about watching a movie. Have you ever watched the movie and imagined that you were some one in the movie? Well, I bet this one will help you a lot. Also, if there is a guy looks like Yamashita in the movie, Who will really care about the story line? Someone thinks he does not have enough expressions throughout the movie. I would say, you need to take a close look. His expression is good enough to tell where his heart is. Really enjoy Yamashita's in this movie. He did a great job!
-
alishalee15 January 2016I watched this movie less than 10 hours ago, and it is still with me. It's not cliché at all as others are saying. And actually, in this day and age, its quite realistic. Because there are teachers having affairs with their students and anybody, no matter what age or job you have, can fall in love. Yuni Kururugi is a shy yet beautiful young girl who doesn't know how to express her feelings. With only one friend, and her cousin being her parental guidance as her parents are away working abroad, you can only imagine how lonely she must be. But then Yuni Kururugis handsome English teacher Haruka Sakurai, asks Yuni to attend regular after school tutoring sessions. At first, Yuni cannot help but to despise him. Haruka Sakurai is popular among the students at Yunis school obviously for his handsome looks. Yuni has some trouble with a group of three other girls who attend her class who can't help but to be envious of Yuni having extra lessons with haruka. They accuse Yuni of faking her grades just so that she could have extra sessions with Haruka but this isn't true. Haruka asks the three girls who approached Yuni and locked her into the gym supplies room as to why she failed to show up to class. The girls insist she left but haruka senses there is something wrong and grills the group of girls until they confess. Haruka finds Yuni in the supplies closet where she appears to have a sprained leg but Yuni insist she is okay and goes off. Haruka follows Yuni and in one exciting moment, swipes her off of the ground and into his hands bridal style where he carries her off to the nurse. From that moment on, Yuni falls in love with Haruka. Over a period of time, Harukas childhood friend and high school sweetheart becomes Yuni's new and other English teacher besides Haruka, where on her first day she sees Haruka kissing a student (Yuni) under his desk. She warns him of the consequences but when out in town one day he spots another boy who attends Yuni's school with Yuni holding hands. And from there, he admits his feelings for Yuni and tells her as soon as she graduates, the two should marry. Over a period of time there is sneaking around and allot of confessions. Yunis cousin finds out and the only thing that stops him from telling is that since working with Haruka, Yunis English grades have gone up significantly and can now get her into her dream college. But Yuni decides she doesn't want to go. Yuni's cousin, who also works in her school then tells Haruka to convince her to go to college. haruka tells Yuni he no longer loves her as its the only way he knows she will go off to college. Yuni leaves. Haruka stays and is still teaching English at the school, until one day Yuni comes back. Its much more dramatic and beautiful then how it seems written. It's definitely a tearjerker. Overall, outstanding beautiful movie with a lesson. Recommended
-
fluffset10 August 2015Japanese adapted a lot of their manga stuff now. They did this from a long time ago so its totally not a trend or what, just the way it is in Japanese cinema. When some press ask Takeshi Kitano about this problem, its not really a problem actually but the problem is how the director handle it to make sure its become a great piece, he said, " Why? Because you can attract audiences, the movie companies don't have the courage to pay some unknown screenwriter, so they just have a lack of original screenwriters, and we have a lack of those resources. So long as you are in the commercial film industry, if you deem it a business, we have no other choice. So I hope that there will be a good movie that will buck that trend.". This is what he said, so the problem for most manga adaptation from my view is the duration, 90 minutes or 120 minutes is not nearly enough to summarize everything that happen in 10 volume of manga with around 50++ chapter and each chapter have about 30/40 pages. They need a really good screenwriter to pull off this job. So, if you've watch a lot romance manga adaptation or what the Japanese label as shojo. For example, L-DK, Kimi Ni Todoke, Ao Haru Ride, Ai Ore, High School Debut and a lot more. You can found this 5 phase which is the safe plan to not messed up in the storyline. First, the first meeting of the boy and a girl. Second, how is their love developing. Third, one of them fall in love and struggling to make the feeling become mutual. Fourth, some problem happen. Lastly, they will make up and the best cliché is they will kiss in the end, which is so fairy tale and really unrealistic. So, every one of this movie will have happy ending I guess. Its too bad they must hired beautiful young actor to do this job in order to satisfy their fan but unfortunately they cant act. So, what I can say is its okay to do manga adaptation because its sure can attract money and fan from all around the world but they must do it more carefully and greatly. If you still not understand please read "Dragonball" manga and then go watch its adaptation. Its easy that way.
-
PennyReviews20 March 2017Okay, it wasn't THAT bad, but it still was too mainstream for me. Sure, I love a good romance, but even so the story had so many potentials to develop and get a good twist here and there, however that never happened. Maybe the fact that the love story was a bit weak or that the chemistry between the couple was so-so, bored me. I mean, when did the teacher fell for her? Shouldn't they have shown us at least that? He can't just steal her away and propose to her out of the blue! Anyway, like I said, the story had potential. Clearly the girl had some issues, as she kept touching her ear every time she talked to someone or she feasted her hand when she was nervous (or ate donuts when she was sad). If only the film had made the effort to explore the girl's mental world better and not focus only on the relationship, maybe then the movie would have some depth and would have been more interesting. Finally, what I liked about this movie: the performances were okay and the way her cousin handled things were interesting. So, 3 out of 10.