After the Rain

Akira is seventeen and works part time in a family restaurant. She was on the school athletics team; an injury ended her running and she has not spoken about it since. Kondo, the restaurant manager, is forty five, divorced, dishevelled and taken seriously by nobody. She falls in love with him and says so directly. He does not know what to do. Akira Nagai directs. Nana Komatsu plays Akira and Yo Oizumi plays Kondo. The source is Jun Mayuzuki's manga. What the film does is refuse to build this as a love story. The subject is that both of them have given something up: she running, he writing. Love is not the matter here but a mirror held to it. Kondo wrote fiction when he was young and abandoned it; the best passage is the scene with his old friend. The adaptation is shorter than the manga and some subplots are cut; the narrative concentrates on the two of them. The risk of the subject is obvious and the film knows it: the age difference is nowhere romanticised, Kondo keeps the distance, and the narrative ties the matter to Akira's own decision. The image is built on rain; the rain of the title is a visual element repeated throughout. Who it is for: viewers who like calm Japanese drama and manga adaptations. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, the subject is uncomfortable for some, and the ending offers no clear resolution.