Lonely Heart

Hiroki is a schoolboy in love with a girl; he cannot tell her and watches from a distance. Then another girl enters his life. She appears suddenly, calls him by name and knows things about him she should not. He does not understand who she is. Does nobody else see her, or is she really there; the film leaves that unclear for a long time. Nobuhiko Obayashi directs. Yasuko Tomita is in the cast. It is one of the films shot in Onomichi, the town where Obayashi was born; he made many films in the same town over his career and they are spoken of together. The subject is adolescence and loss. When it becomes clear who the mysterious girl is, the film turns from a ghost story into a narrative of grief. Obayashi's manner is plain here too: abrupt changes of colour, openly artificial transitions, superimposed images and realism deliberately broken. The use of music and song has a function; the film also builds the feeling of a period. It was little known outside Japan and hard to find for a long time. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese cinema, Obayashi, and fantastical narratives of youth. Who it is not for: the style is demanding, the narrative is scattered, and the emotional register rises toward the end.