Been in a bit of a slump as of late with my drama and movie watches, while most have been okay views nothing has really stood out lately and this was no exception, another so-so film. Sort of bombed when it came out last year but the plot and trailer for it looked interesting, not a terrible watch just thought it was going to be better.
One night Watanbe(Goro) and a buddy were at a batting cage when they became interested in watching a lone young woman practicing her baseball swings, after she finished Watanbe noticed it was a new employee at his comapny called Nakanishi(Kyoko), they hadn't met at work but on this day for some reason really hit it off. The three of them went out to a karaoke bar when Watanbe's friend skipped out leaving the 2 of them together, Nakanishi ended up getting quite drunk and he carried her home but nothing started then. What started the two of them in their 'affair' was that Nakanishi had ended up getting sick on his suit, to repay him she tried to buy him a new one which for some reaon made him quite angry, instead the two of them ended up going out to dinner together and during it they really hit off even more so. After the dinner they ended up at one of her father's houses, no one lived there but Nakanishi ended up living there as the movie went on, but on this night the pair started on their affair, what she saw in him never came out as he was 20 years older and really just a regular salaryman. The reason the house was unoccupied was that there was a murder there 15 years prior, Nakanishi's father's secretary who he was having an affair with had been found stabbed by Nakanishi, to this day the culprit had not been found and deep down both her father and aunt thought she was the person who had killed her.
Sounds like a promising start to a good movie but after that it really started to drag, the pair kept their affair a secret except to her father and aunt, Watanbe really never had a problem hiding what was going on from his wife and young duaghter, though him and Nakanishi were together so often he always had an excuse which his wife would believe, he thought so but in the final scene he found out she did know something was going on but hadn't let on, this sort of left him quite scared and leery of her. Really the whole movie after the promising beginning was just Watanbe and Nakanishi continuing their affair, it was quite a boring one as it wasn't steamy at all which really hurt this film, this kept on until near the end when the truth came out about the affair, wasn't that she was interested in him at all but was using him to get back at ther father. She admitted in front of everyone that her father's secretary Reiko was not murdered but had actually stabbed herself and Nakanishi showed them the suicide note, she had kept this secret for all these years to get back at ther father for being in an affair which was the reason her mother had also stabbed herself to death. Not sure what the whole reason she kept it a secret for so long, didn't seem as though her father was real upset with the truth, just after that she admitted to Watanbe the real reason they had the affair, mainly to get back at her father which left him fairly confused and dumbfounded, along with the rest of us, thus the film ends with him going back to his family but things there will never be the same although it appears that his wife will be staying by his side.
It turned out to be an okay watch, it was 125 minutes long, had they taken 20 minutes off may have worked out better as the first hour sort of dragged by or had they used that time to explain a few things more in detail or even expanded the roles of Watanbe's wife to see if she wanted revenge on him for the affair. All in all a weak recommendation, think it's worth a view but just had the potential to have been better than what it was, if you're a fan of the main cast then would watch it as they did a fine job. Kyoko's role was good but also could have been expanded, at times you were wondering if she wasn't some sort of psychopath, turns out she wasn't but a few jolting scenes from her in a role like that would have added some life to this film. As a final rating would give it a 7/10, worth a view but just too slow paced but worse than that was that is was a bit boring, with a storyline like that shouldn't have been. Check out the next two posts for many screenshots of Kyoko from this film.
Year: 2010 Running time: 125 minutes Director: Setsuro Wakamatsu
This film also is known as Before Sunrise
Cast:
Goro Kishitani as Kazuya Watanbe
Kyoko Fukada as Akiya Nakanishi
Tae Kimura as Yumiko Watanbe
Ken Ishiguro as Shintani
Masatoshi Nakamura as Tatsuhiko Nakanishi
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