Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on December 2012

Premiering at the Tokyo International Film Fest in 2011, this is a quintessential Japanese indie film—which is to say it falls into all of the traps of poor filmmaking. Shot in black and white with no soundtrack, Momo Iro Sora Wo could survive if the pace wasn’t so maddeningly slow and the story was interesting.

Nominally, the plot follows high school student Izumi, whose hobby is rating newspaper articles. One day she finds a wallet with a wad of bills and for some inexplicable reason lends most of the cash to a middle-aged guy with whom her relationship is unclear. After some pressure by her friends she returns the wallet. The rightful owner is a rich-kid classmate named Koki who is as petulant and stuck up as his status would suggest. In lieu of the missing money, he demands Izumi create newspaper articles of only good news to console his friend in the hospital.

Languid, with little energy, no action and uninteresting dialog, the piece has almost nothing to keep us involved. Unwatchable.

English title: About the Pink Sky; 113 min