Katte ni furuetero (2017)

Katte ni furuetero: Directed by Akiko Ohku. With Mayu Matsuoka, Kanji Furutachi, Anna Ishibashi, Hairi Katagiri. Virgin twenty-something girl is neat, talented and professional, although almost too much of all these. She is an office lady who still romanticizes a school-mate, but has the opportunity to move on and forward with a man at an after-work get-together. She hesitates yearning for the man she loved at school and happens to meet him again soon enough. Will she choose option A, B or something else we can call C?

“Yoshiko is a shy office girl who – as we slowly realise – is even more shy than we think. She has vivid conversations with a lady on her bus to work, a local elderly fisherman, a guy in her 7-11 – but all these conversations are in her head, she has only one real friend, the girl who sits next to her in the office. Yoshikou0026#39;s life is paralysed by her love for u0026#39;ichiu0026#39; (one), the cool guy in her school sheu0026#39;s been obsessed with for a decade. The problem is, Ichi was scarcely even aware she existed. Likewise, she is only vaguely aware of the doofus guy in her office (conveniently nicknamed u0026#39;niu0026#39; (two) who is clumsily trying to persuade her to be his girlfriend. After a near fatal accident, Yoshiko determines to do what it takes to engineer a meeting with ichi to find out if she can really make him love her.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis whimsical, witty and occasional surreal character study focuses entirely on Yoshiko, brilliantly played by Mayu Matsuoko, who was equally striking in last years Kore-eda film u0026#39;Shopliftersu0026#39;. We see everything through this very unreliable narrators eyes. The film is ably directed by Akiko Ohku, but it is definitely overlong, it could have been trimmed by 20 minutes with no loss. The whole film is a very slight edifice, with its low budget frequently showing, but Matsuoko holds the screen in every scene so it never outstays its welcome.”