Aki and Naoko are childhood friends who are drifting apart as adults. Immersed in her family life, Naoko now has a husband and daughter; Aki, on the other hand, remains single and is on leave from work due to a personal crisis. The plot might sound familiar but it has never been told like this. The director Kusano Natsuka stages the interactions through an actors’ table-read and, as the lines are repeated, the scenes gradually develop into on-location conversations. Moreover, she repositions the dramatic peak of the story to the beginning: Aki has murdered Naoko’s daughter. Structurally inventive, Kusano's daring cinema implements ‘distantiation’ effects to get to the heart of friendship issues at times when life has settled. While the repetitions convey the suffocation of role patterns in both friendship and family, a line left out or added in unsettles and reminds us life can take unexpected turns.
大卫·阿金,芭芭拉·巴斯里,尼德·巴蒂,凯伦·布莱克,罗尼·布莱克利,蒂莫西·布朗,基思·卡拉丹,杰拉丁·卓别林,罗伯特·多奎,谢莉·杜瓦尔,艾伦·加菲尔德,亨利·吉布森,斯科特·格伦,杰夫·高布伦,芭芭拉·哈里斯,迈克尔·墨菲,Allan F. Nicholls,Dave Peel,克里斯蒂娜·雷恩斯,伯特·莱姆森,莉莉·汤姆林,格温·韦尔斯,基南·怀恩,Merle Kilgore,理查德·巴斯