One Night

On the night of 23 May 2004 Koharu runs her husband over with one of the cars from the family taxi firm, killing the man who had been beating her children for years. Then she leaves the three of them and disappears. Fifteen years later she comes back, and that is where the film really starts: what became of the siblings in the meantime, and whether she saved them or abandoned them a second time. It is adapted from Yuko Kuwabara's stage play. Yuko Tanaka plays Koharu, with Ryohei Suzuki, Takeru Satoh and Mayu Matsuoka as her children. Kazuya Shiraishi clears nobody; he does not make the mother a hero, and he does not make the children's anger unreasonable either.