Nana

Two young women sit next to each other on a train and both are called Nana. Nana Komatsu is going to Tokyo after her boyfriend: eager, disorganised, quick to fall in love. Nana Osaki is the singer of a punk band: cold, determined, and there for the music. By coincidence they move into the same flat. Kentaro Otani directs. Aoi Miyazaki plays Nana Komatsu and Mika Nakashima plays Nana Osaki. The source is Ai Yazawa's manga. Casting Mika Nakashima was the decisive choice. She was already a well known singer and performed the stage sections in her own voice; the songs from the film topped the charts in Japan and the manga's fictional band acquired a real musical identity. The film's interest is not romance but the friendship between two women and what each expects of the other. The male characters exist and do not sit at the centre. Yazawa's manga was a bestseller in Japan and culturally influential. The film takes its early chapters, and a second followed in 2006. The series was left unfinished because of the author's illness and has still not been completed, which is why the adaptations could not continue either. Who it is for: viewers who like manga adaptation, Japanese youth drama and films about music. Who it is not for: for readers of the manga the narrative is heavily compressed, and the melodrama rises in the second half.