Year: 2007
Length: 95 minutes
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Main Cast:
Maki Horikita as Nagisa
Shunsuke Kubozuka as Satoru
Saki Takaoka as Eriko
Chinami Iwamoto as Madoka
After my last Maki movie watch, Into the White Night which was the pits to put it mildly, can Maki make a comeback with this view? Actually not a comeback as this was made 4 years before the other one but most of her films from 2003-2008 were mainly solid watches so I was hoping for that here. One note too which I've just come back to add on is that film appeared to be shot with a hand held camera, the picture was moving around often which made it hard take screenshots, not sure why they filmed it that way as I don't think it added anything to the movie, didn't hurt it though either.
Maki plays Nagisa, a 17 year old high school student has just learned she only has 3 months to live! The year before her mother passed away from cancer, now she has the same disease and though they never mentioned it there's no chance for recovery. Nagisa really has no clue what to do with her remaining time left but shortly after she learns the tragic news she abruptly leaves and heads from Tokyo to her old hometown in Chiba prefecture. Nagisa went there to relive some old memories but mainly to see her old childhood friend Satoru. Not sure why they were such good friends as he's 9 years older, he's 26 and she's 17 so don't know how they could have gotten so close especially as she moved away some years before. Satoru lives in his parent's old house, he's really just a handyman who fixes up discarded things and sells them to make a living, he seems though he's got his head on straight and is a dependable person.
Nagisa ends up staying with him, she hasn't told him about her disease or why she wanted to come back to visit him and her old hometown but he never presses her on why. Both get along quite well and end up spending almost all their time together just doing basic things such as visiting sites or the ocean, etc., they just really get along well. But then Nagasi finds out he's having an affair with an older woman, one who is still married with a daughter. Eriko is her name and she says she's getting a divorce to be with Satoru but that doesn't seem to be in the works, least from what we can see. Nagasi is aghast at the affair and has no clue what to do, what she does do is take away Eriko's daughter Madoka. The two of them end up spending the day together, but it seems as though something tragic is about to happen and that's Nagisa is planning for the two of them to end their lives together! Well, it appeared as it was going to happen as Nagisa starts bringing Madoka into the sea so they can drown together but that never quite happened as she chickened out, she never came out and said why she didn't go through with it.
Satoru didn't know about her 'death plan' but did know she had taken Madoka away and was furious with Nagisa, so much that he told her to leave. It didn't get that far as she and Satoru had a long talk, Nagisa also had a long talk with Eriko and seems as though she had settled things down for the most part, She did reveal to Eriko that it wasn't Madoka she wanted to hurt but she just wants to hurt a lot of people, she still hasn't told anyone there that she only has a short time to live. Finale of the film was decent as Nagisa and Satoru ended up taking abus ride around town where she breaks down and reminisces about her growing up in the town and all the great times her and Satoru had together. Film ends with her getting off the bus and Satoru taking it back home, it seems that he knows something very wrong is going to happen to Nagisa but we don't know if her really knows about her disease. Story ends there, Nagisa only spent a week in her hometown so still has close to 3 months to live, may have been better if we had seem some sort of conclusion about her, did she die or was there some sort of miracle cure.
Not a must watch film but much better than the previous Maki movie I watched. Also not a film which you would want to view many times over but think it's worth a watch, was interesting and even though at times there was very little dialogue the pace of it was very good. By the synopsis going in thought it was going to be a tearjerker with Nagisa having only 3 months to live but it wasn't one at all, just a solid film to watch. Will give this a grade of 7.5/10, enjoyable view though one you probably wouldn't watch many times. Small cast helped too as we got to learn the characters better, they all did a solid job, especially Kubozuka. Of course Maki was really good in this too, even though many of her films and dramas aren't always that good of a watch she usually does a good job, check out the next post for many screenshots of her from the film. Wanted to put a trailer for the film here but sadly there's only one really short one on YT which wasn't all that good.
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