Acting
In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.
Mikage, a young woman who loses her parents when young. She grows up in a lonely household with her grandmother who dies when Mikage reaches adulthood. Grief-stricken, she finds solace in the kitchen.
The screenplay is Haruhiko Arai of "Tragedy of W" and "Revolver". The man is a detective who doesn't take on anything other than background checks for marriage and looking for cats. One day, a request for a job that belongs to him comes in. It is from Masako, a married woman who suspects her husband of having an affair.
Tsukiko is in her late 30s and living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, 'Sensei', in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired and, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food and drink sake, and as the seasons pass - from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms - Tsukiko and Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.
An eerie statue of the Kannon shedding tears in an old Western-style house. Fifty years of the strange lives of the mothers and daughters who protect the statue of the Kannon.
