Air Date: January 5, 2011 on TBS Length: 100 minutes
Cast:
Kie Kitano as Kana Uemura, ages 18-22
Yui Natsukawa as Yoko Uemura, the mother
Shiwa Iwashita as Waka Uemura, the grandmother
Mana Ashida as Kana Uemura aged 9
Kyoko Matsunaga as Momoko Uemura
Hiroyuki Onoue as Mitsuo Uemura
Meibi Yamanouchi as Mio Uemura
Shohei Miura as Daisuke
Surprised I never watched this until a few days ago, had been wanting to for a long time but for some strange reason kept forgetting about it. This movie was based on a song released in 2010 by Kana Uemura, think it was some sort of an autobiographical song and from what I read the movie stayed fairly close to the song.
The Uemura family is a bit of a dysfunctional one, there are 4 siblings and their mother, she had kicked out her husband many years ago. They live right next door to the mother's parents and the grandmother ends up being the key person in the story as Kana, who is 9 when the story starts, is much younger than her other siblings and ends up spending much of her free time with her grandparents. Though the family was definitely odd things are going well, the mother works in a kitchen but is able to support the whole family on her salary plus all the kids seem to be doing well enough in school.
However one day tragedy strikes when the grandfather passes away, needless to say the grandmother is devastated but perhaps even more than her is Kana who lost her father figure. Kana talks her mother into letting her move next door to live with her grandmother, wasn't hard selling her on that as Kana over the years is so much closer to her grandmother than her regular mother. This is a tale of "two Kanas", the first was 9 years old and shortly after she moved in with her grandmother the story jumps forward to when Kana is 18 and a senior in high school.
Life has gone well for Kana since she moved in with her grandmother, she's close to graduating high school and plans to attend a music college as she's become quite a good guitar player over the years. She's also now has a boyfriend, things are going well between them but perhaps too well as both have let a few things in their lives start to slide. He's a very talented runner and much is expected of him but he's been slipping as of late, his times are going up instead of down and the main reason for that is him seeing Kana so often. She then decides that both of them had better not see each other for a while so they both can concentrate on their major activities, his running and her music. And that was the last we see of her boyfriend in the movie, he was really only in it for about 10 minutes.
Kana is very gifted with the guitar but has one major problem which is she can't perform in front of people, so far the only one who knows about this is her grandmother. One day though Kana puts all that nervousness behind her and plays at a local park unannounced, didn't mention it before but the story takes place in Osaka. The first few times Kana plays in the park there are very few people who stop to listen but after a while she starts to get much better at her playing and along with that the crowds start getting much bigger, she is getting a bit popular. One day watching Kana play was the owner of a local music venue who invited her to play at his club but she refused him the first few times as she finally admits to everyone how nervous she gets playing in front of crowds.
After a while though Kana once again sucks it up and agrees to play at a show at the music club, there will also be many more music acts there. Naturally Kana takes the stage for the first time and is an immediate success, she wins the crowd over very easily and now the question is what is the next step for her then? The next step has to involve moving from Osaka to Tokyo if she wants to really pursue her musical career, took a bit for her to finally take that next step but she eventually does and moves by herself to Tokyo.
Life in Tokyo ends up being so-so for Kana, she gets a part time job as a waitress to pay the bills as she's unable for a while to have any success playing her music. She's playing once again in small parks but in Tokyo she's having a much harder time getting crowds to watch her, the competition there is so much more than it was in Osaka. Kana keeps at it though and does come close to moving back home, main reason for that isn't that she's been unsuccessful but her grandmother falls ill and is hospitalized. She rushes back to Osaka to see her grandmother who immediately tells her to go back to Tokyo and not to come back until she's hit it big. Kana returns shortly after that and keeps at it and finally one day is rewarded as she plays her first gig in a club and is noticed by a producer. She has an audition coming up and she has written the title song of this movie to play for the producer when once again her grandmother falls ill.
Kana rushes back again to Osaka but her grandmother doesn't have much longer to live, in a bit of a dramatic ending she plays the "Toire no Kamisama" song in the hospital room for her and the family, the grandmother passes away as Kana is singing it. But she died happily as she realized that Kana is now going to make it big, she needed that one signature song and now that she finally wrote one her grandmother passed away which is how the movie ends.
Don't know if the song also ends there, we don't learn if Kana does hit it big with that song or what happens to her when she returns to Tokyo but have a feeling all ends well with her and the family. Few other tidbits happened here and there during the film, mainly with Kana's family but for the most part the whole movie revolved around the relationship of Kana and her grandmother. Most of the cast did a solid job in the movie, Mana was irritating as usual but luckily was only in the first 44 minutes of the movie and after that Kii did the part of Kana and really did a superb job in the role.
Overall I'd give this a grade of a 8.5/10, no classic but one really enjoyable movie, no action in it but the time flew right by, never dragged at all and was quite interesting and fun to watch, would really recommend watching this movie. Next post has many, many screenshots of Kii from the movie, she looked unbelievable in it but she looks that way in everything she appears in.
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