Director – Kei Ishikawa – 2025 – UK, Japan, Poland – Cert. 12a – 123m
From the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
***1/2
An aspiring journalist in 1982 England delves into her mother’s past life in 1952 Nagasaki and unearths dark family secrets – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 13th
As will be seen from the above logline description, this essentially plays out in two timelines.
One is in Nagasaki, Japan in 1952, less than a decade after the dropping of the atomic bomb, where the married and barely visibly pregnant Etsuko (Suzo Hirose from Lupin III the First, Takashi Yamazaki, 2019; The Third Murder, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017; The Boy and the Beast, Mamoru Hosoda, 2015; Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015) befriends Sachiko (Fumi Nikaido from River’s Edge, Isao Yukisada, 2018; Himizu, Sion Sono, 2011), the mother of local waif Mariko (Mio Suzuki), who lives in an isolated shack near the river and plans to emigrate to the US with a man named ‘Frank’.
The other is in a town in England somewhere near Greenham Common, Berkshire, in 1982, where aspiring journalist Niki (Camilla Aiko from Dr.… Read the rest
