New Restoration!

Nobuhiro Suwa’s second feature and breakout film telescopes in on the seemingly mannered, domestic life of a young couple – Kei, a cash-strapped aspiring actor and Yu, a junior employee at a high-end clothing store – and finds in the vicissitudes of their relationship a quiet storm of high stakes affection and alienation. An under-seen masterstroke of recent Japanese cinema, Suwa and his cast deftly conjure the emotional range and improvised precision of Jacques Rivette and Mike Leigh to inhabit a story that incrementally evokes the most universal sentient from the most quotidian detail.

(Nobuhiro Suwa, Japan, Japense w/ Eng subs, 89 min, 1997, DCP)