A Bride for Rip Van Winkle

Nanami is a teacher on contract with no connection to anyone, and the only living part of her life is a social network. When she gets engaged to a man she met there, a problem appears: there is nobody to sit on her side at the wedding. A man called Amuro, found through the same network, arranges everything from behind the scenes, and her relatives and friends are all hired actors. As life comes apart after the wedding, Nanami starts taking the jobs he arranges and ends up living in a large house with a woman named Mashiro. Shunji Iwai adapted his own novel, directed it and cut it. Rented families, fake relatives and paid emotional labour are not an oddity here but an ordinary industry. The three-hour director's cut is taken as the real version. Who it is for: viewers who like long Japanese drama and stories built on solitude. Who it is not for: anyone impatient about running time.