Initiation Love

Yukihiko Tsutsumi's 2015 Japanese film adapts Kurumi Inui's novel and is known for its final scene. In the late 1980s in Shizuoka, Takkun, a university student looking for work, and Mayu, a dental hygienist, meet on a blind date and start seeing each other; when Takkun finds a job in Tokyo they begin a long-distance relationship and the bond wears down. The film carefully rebuilds the popular culture, music and fashion of the late eighties. What the structure is actually about surfaces in the last five minutes and changes the meaning of everything watched before, which makes the film hard to discuss. Watching while knowing spoils the experience; watching without knowing makes the first half look like an ordinary youth romance. Tsutsumi took that risk and placed the clues honestly. Who it's for: viewers who like Japanese films that play with narrative structure and 1980s nostalgia. Who it's not for: anyone who cannot bear the ordinariness of the first half, or who counts films resting on a final reveal as a trick.