Ren'ai Shashin

A renown photographer, man going by nom de plume Shizuru Satonaka, tells the story behind him adopting a woman's name.

They met a few years back, while Makoto Segawa (Matsuda Ryuhei) was still a student, aspiring to become a professional photographer. From the first sight, he fell for the eccentric Satonaka Shizuru (Hirosue Ryoko), a persona of some notoriety on the campus. She moves in with him and begins sharing his passion for photography. It soon becomes evident that she has an innate affinity for it - her imperfect amateur shots show and tell more than Makoto's technically sound, but cold and impersonal photographs. Makoto is jealous of her which leads to them breaking up when Shizuru receives an award in a photography competition they take part in together.

Three years later Makoto receives a letter from Shizuru. She's gone to New York where she continues to hone her skills as a photographer. Soon he learns of a rumour that Shizuru has been dead for some time now, killed by an unknown assailant. Faced with this contradictory pieces of information, he travels to NY himself to ascertain the truth. What are the chances he'll find a missing person in the 10 million crowd?

While the intrigue thickens in New York, the movie takes a slump there, with lackluster performances by some of the foreign cast, over the top finale and at least one serious plot hole - the movie would end quite a bit sooner if someone was able to put two and two together. The more toned down Japanese part is of a notch higher quality.

In a fashion typical for the director, serious themes are freely mixed with comedic scenes. On a few occasions, the director uses satellite image zoom-in shots that will feature heavily in his SPEC series. I don't remember seeing them in Tsutsumi's earlier works, they might originate here.

The performances from Matsuda and Hirosue are solid, minus Matsuda's narration in English, which gets tiresome sooner rather than later. The movie is composed as an account of the events described during an interview, hence Matsuda uses English, however there is no apparent reason why the interviewer couldn't be Japanese. It would make life easier for both the audience and Matsuda himself.

Interesting watch - an uneven movie, strangely refreshing due to nonconformist plot - a story sad in a brutal way, quite unlike the typical Japanese melodrama. And a proof that a nail that sticks out gets hammered down - considering the 2006 remake.

My point for this movie

If watching this movie left you with a feeling that you have seen it somewhere before, you might be right. The movie's script was novelised by Ichikawa Takuji in Renai Shashin: Mō Hitotsu no Monogatari. The novel was remade as a movie in 2006 and released under the title Tada, Kimi o Aishiteru. The movie, starring Tamaki Hiroshi and Miyazaki Aoi as respectively Makoto and Shizuru, is known as Heavenly Forest in the west. Apart from the names and a very general outline of the story, both movies share little common ground.

Although I assumed the movie's Japanese title is a reference to Ima, Ai ni Yukimasu, another novel by the author which had its successful movie adaptation in 2004, it reportedly comes from a verse in its theme song, Otsuka Ai's Ren'ai Shashin.

Now, if you google for "Renai Shashin", you will mostly get references to the song and a single link to imdb site of Tsutsumi's movie. There's something half-profound, half-ironic in seeing a derived work based on a derived work based on a derived work outshining the original.