Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on January 2013

French-Canadian director-producer Claude Gagnon has made something of a cottage industry for films about internationals in Japan, the country he lived in for much of the 1970s. His previous work Kamataki (2005) starred the legendary Tatsuya Fuji and was a moving tale of a young Canadian who comes to Japan after a suicide attempt. The present work has a similar theme.

Sixty-one-year-old French-Canadian Pierre (Gabriel Arcand) is undergoing an existential crisis at home and comes to Okinawa for a qigong retreat. There, he meets abused housewife Junko (Yuki Kudoh), who essentially throws herself at him and convinces him to take her on his travels. Their relationship is sweet and awkward in an authentic and sensitive way. Both characters feel lost and empty and instead of going the easy route of finding fulfillment in each other, the film explores their ennui while acknowledging the difficulty of cross-cultural communication. Mainly in English and Japanese, with some French. (103 min)