Drawing Closer

A Japanese film about young people. Akito is at high school. He has a heart condition and the time the doctors give him is short; he tells nobody and has stopped drawing. Haruna joins his class. She seems cheerful, laughs constantly and talks to everyone. After a while it emerges that she is ill as well. The two tell each other. For both it means talking without playing a part for the first time. They make a list: things they want to do in the time left. It is not a list of large aims; there are items like seeing the sea, cooking together, going to a concert. Akito starts drawing again and makes a portrait of Haruna. What the film is interested in is not the illness but how they spend the time left and what they will tell their families. The lines of the parents come forward in the second half. The source is a young adult novel. Ren Nagase plays Akito and Natsuki Deguchi plays Haruna. Takahiro Miki directed; he has made many films of this kind in Japan. A familiar choice for anyone who likes Japanese youth melodrama. For a viewer wanting a new narrative, the film takes the known steps of its genre and keeps the emotional dose high.