Love Life
Inspired by a Japanese romantic pop ballad, director Kōji Fukada’s poignant love-triangle drama is a beautifully observed meditation on hidden family tensions, old flames and divided loyalties. Married couple Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jirō (Kento Nagayama) share an outwardly idyllic life in a sunny apartment with son Keita (Tetta Shimada). But their placid facade of happiness is shattered by the sudden reappearance of Taeko’s troubled first husband, Park (Atom Sunada), who is now deaf, sick and homeless. A quietly devastating slow-motion tragedy told with elegant restraint, LOVE LIFE is a master class in hushed beauty.
Win Morisaki, Kento Nagayama, Fumino Kimura
- Notes From OscilloscopeIf Douglas Sirk were alive and Japanese, he would have made LOVE LIFE. That might be a bit reductive and simplistic, but it’s also not off-base. Kōji Fukada mines plenty of ideas and events that many might think of as tropes but are really at the heart of any successful melodrama. Is it heightened reality? Absolutely. Does it speak to humanity? Absolutely. Does it simultaneously, unceremoniously tear your heart from your chest and also inject you with a feeling that reminds you what can be great about personhood? Hell yeah, it does.