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Three Stories Of Love

(Koibito-tachi, ????)

+ Director Q&A

Ryosuke Hashiguchi
2017 | 127 mins | Japan
Japanese with English Subtitles

Showing Times:

• Wed 6 Mar: 7.30pm + Pre film dining

Offering a glimpse into the microcosm of relationships within Japanese society, three vignettes tell very different stories of love, loss and rejection.

Unfulfilled and exploited housewife, Toko (Toko Narushima), is trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband disinterested in how his mother treats his wife. An encounter with a sympathetic scam artist offers respite from a life lacking all affection.

An intuitive bridge inspector (Atsushi Shinohara) had been widowed in a brutal and random murder of his wife three years prior. Grief-stricken and obsessed with fantasies of revenge, his heartbreak sends his life in a downward spiral.

Shinomiya is an elite lawyer with an inflated ego who enjoys mistreating his younger male lover. However, what appears to be emotional unavailability turns out to be emotional vulnerability when his life comes crashing down and he seeks refuge with a school friend he once loved.

Named the best Japanese film of 2015 by Kinema Junpo and Mark Shilling of The Japan Times, this tenderly crafted work puts loneliness of modern life on full display. The emotional damage incurred by the desperate protagonist trio is made all the more relatable by the acting of three non-trained newcomers who were picked specifically for the roles and had the script written around their personalities by Hashiguchi.

PRE-FILM DINING

Enjoy a specially prepared two-course meal in our Café Bar before watching the film on Wed 6 Mar.

£15: Cinema and meal ticket
£18.95: Cinema, meal and glass of wine 

Part of The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2019

People Still Call It Love: Passion, Affection And Destruction In Japanese Cinema

Love, in all its semblances and dimensions, is a state so universally experienced by humankind that it has provided a perpetual source of inspiration in the long history of global cinema.

The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2019 features thoughtfully selected works from Japan’s artistic repertoire, all focusing on this theme in one way or another. As the conventional binaries defining what it means to love continually give way to new understandings of this sweeping emotion, so too does this year’s curation aim to provide insights into a wider context of love in Japanese society.

Venue: Exeter Phoenix, Studio 74