Theatre: A Love Story

Isao Yukisada's 2020 Japanese film adapts Naoki Matayoshi's novel. Nagata, who runs a small theatre company, is in crisis; his actors have lost faith in him and his writing goes nowhere. Meeting Saki, a woman he notices is wearing the same shoes, creates an immediate closeness. The film begins like a love story, but what it is actually about is how a man who cannot face his own lack of talent consumes another person's life. Yukisada does not excuse Nagata. Saki's patience is presented not as a virtue but as years being lost, an honesty unusual in Japanese romantic drama. The imbalance between Kento Yamazaki and Mayu Matsuoka is deliberate: the camera mostly watches the woman watching him. Who it's for: viewers who like Japanese literary adaptations and films about the cost of trying to be an artist. Who it's not for: anyone expecting romantic redemption, or who will find watching the protagonist's selfishness wearing.