Birds Without Names

Towako is still thinking about Kurosaki, the boyfriend she left eight years ago, despite what that relationship did to her. She now lives with Jinji, a labourer fifteen years older, lives off his money and puts him down constantly. When it emerges that Kurosaki is missing, everything in Towako's life starts changing meaning again. Kazuya Shiraishi directed the film from Mahokaru Numata's novel. Its subject is a violent relationship and the mark it left; the telling does not make a spectacle of the violence, it carries the consequences. Towako is not presented as someone to like, and the film does not treat that as a defect. Yu Aoi won a number of prizes for the part, and the film took best director and best actor at the Blue Ribbon Awards. Sadao Abe plays Jinji.