Always - Sunset on Third Street

Tokyo, 1958. On one street a car repair shop, a cheap eating house and a man who writes children's stories sit side by side. A girl arriving from the country to work moves into the garage and does not find the factory job she expected. The bar owner takes in a boy temporarily and the arrangement stretches on. In the background Tokyo Tower is going up, a little higher every day. The subject is not nostalgia but everyone waiting for a better future. All of the characters are waiting for something to arrive: a television, a refrigerator, the tower, a new job. Waiting becomes the narrative itself. The form rests on a city rebuilt from scratch. The Tokyo of 1958 was largely produced with computer work; the streets, the trams and the half-built tower were added digitally. Takashi Yamazaki came from visual effects, and this is one of the cases where the technique serves an emotional purpose. It took large box office in Japan and won across many categories at the national academy awards; two sequels followed and the series became a fixture there. Hidetaka Yoshioka plays the writer, Shinichi Tsutsumi the mechanic and Maki Horikita the girl from the country. Who it is for: viewers who like warm period films and stories about communities. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by frequent emotional prompting; the film does it openly and throughout.