Your Lie in April

As a child Kousei won piano competition after competition; under his mother's strict watch he played so exactly that they called him the metronome. After her death he stopped, because he can no longer hear his own piano. Years later he meets Kaori, a violinist who plays not by the rules but as she likes, and who pushes him back onto a stage. Takehiko Shinjo adapts the manga of the same name. The music is not decoration but the way the characters say what they cannot speak. He gives the concert scenes considerable room and puts the tension into the act of playing. Kento Yamazaki plays Kousei and Suzu Hirose plays Kaori. Who it's for: Viewers who like manga adaptations, music-centred youth drama, and emotional Japanese films. Who it's not for: The telling plays openly for tears and the illness material runs in familiar shapes. Readers of the manga will feel the compressions.