The Cherry Orchard

There is a drama club at a girls’ high school. Every year the school stages a play on its founding day. The play they perform is Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. This year there is talk of cancelling the performance. The reason is Noriko, a girl in her final year. She was seen smoking in a cafe with pupils from another school. The staff cannot decide what to do. The story takes place in the hours before the performance. The girls put on costumes and go over their lines. Old matters between them open up in those hours. Who envies whom, and who is close to whom. The play on stage and their own lives run into each other. The film is not about the play but about that waiting. It was adapted from a comic by Akimi Yoshida. Hiroko Nakajima and Miho Tsumiki appear in the ninety six minute film, a Japanese production Shun Nakahara finished in 1990.