After the Flowers

Set in the Edo period, the film has Ito, the daughter of a clan official, at its centre. She meets Magoshiro Eguchi, a samurai of low rank, and challenges him to a match with bamboo swords. Magoshiro accepts, and the match starts something between them. But an arranged marriage with Saisuke Katagiri lies ahead of Ito, and Kayo is at Magoshiro’s side. The film builds love not as something said outright but as something left unsaid. The sword scenes are used less as display than as two people taking each other’s measure. How much say a woman can have over her own life lies beneath the account. Keiko Kitagawa and Masahiro Komoto take the leads in Kenji Nakanishi’s hundred and seven minute Japanese film, completed in 2010.