LOVE ON SUNDAY 2: LAST WORDS (Japan, 2007)

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

91 Minutes, digital projection, in Japanese with English Subtitles
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Maki Horikita, Shunsuke Kubozuka, Saki Takaoka

Showtimes: SUN June 29, 3:00pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets];
WED July 2, 12:30pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets].
Note: "Buy Tickets" links will take you to the IFC Center website (for shows at IFC Center) and to Japan Society website (for shows at Japan Society). Tickets for each venue must be purchased separately.

LOVE ON SUNDAY 2: LAST WORDS is one of Hiroki’s most sensitive and delicate films as he depicts the final days of a young woman coming to terms with her impending death and her realization that she’ll never get to do so much that she wanted to do with her life. Hiroki completely avoids every melodramatic pitfall and cliché that this type of material usually attracts and in doing so makes it all the more heartbreaking.

“How long do I have?” asks seventeen-year-old Nagisa of her father after learning that she has the same kind of cancer that recently killed her mother. The answer: three months. She decides to visit the seaside town where she spent her early years, looking for the place where her parents met, where she was born, where she went to school and trying to recapture all those lost memories. She also needs to see Satoshi, an older boy that she always had an enormous crush on and has never forgotten. He invites her to stay with him for a few days but he still thinks of her as a kid. She slowly begins to realize that he’s having an affair with a married woman and that his life is going nowhere. And that he will never love her. Left unsaid throughout is any mention of her illness, but it looms powerfully over everything because every word and every action is precious to her. In an astonishing scene filmed in one take, Nagisa boards a bus with Satoshi and for a few minutes lives out her childhood dream of being a tour guide – but it turns into a poignant tour of her life and all the things she will never see again, and it rips your heart open.

Nagisa is played by Maki Horikita, best known as the sweet country girl in ALWAYS: SUNSET ON THIRD STREET and its sequel (screening this year at NYAFF). Director Hiroki has a knack of bringing out brilliant performances from his actresses and this one is extremely subtle, yet cuts right to the bone. It’s a tour de force that will leave viewers shaken, drained and feeling very much alive.