'Love Life': A story of loss and love - review

Koji Fukada’s new film, Love Life, which opened in theaters throughout Israel on Thursday, is a low-key story about how complicated and messy love and loss can be. Fukada, the award-winning director of such films as Harmonium and The Real Thing, opens and closes Love Life in the same modest apartment, but its protagonists undergo a devastating journey of grief, redemption, and reconciliation in a very short period of time.

Love Life isn’t an easy film to watch, because much of it is simply so deeply sad, but it is moving and doesn’t go for neat resolutions.

What is it about?

It tells the story of Taeko (Kimura Fumino), a social worker raising a precocious son, Keita (Tetta Shimada), with her new husband, Jiro (Kento Nagayama). Keita’s father, Park (Atom Sunada), an unconventional, underemployed deaf man from Korea, left her when the boy was little and disappeared without a trace. Jiro is kind and responsible, and although he is fine with the idea of raising Keita with Taeko, he won’t adopt the boy formally until his disapproving father agrees to accept Taeko and her son. Taeko is hurt by this rejection, but tries to make up for it by being the best daughter-in-law she can be, organizing an elaborate birthday party for Jiro’s father and also celebrating the fact that her son has won a prize for his skill at the board game Othello. When the party starts, her biggest worry is about her disapproving father-in-law and her husband’s ex, who is taking part in the festivities, but by the end of it – following an accident involving Keita – she is facing a tragedy of such proportions that nothing in her life will ever be the same.

This accident brings Keita’s father back into her life. Park is now homeless, and he and his pet cat shake up her life. Although his life is a mess – his visa status is murky since their divorce, and he is facing deportation to Korea – he offers a kind of emotional honesty in facing their shared tragedy that no one else around her can match. He lashes out at her when they meet after many years, then apologizes, but his raw grief is easier for her to handle than the muted responses of the other people in her life. She throws herself into helping Park get his life back on track, while Jiro has to confront his own thoughtless treatment of his ex-girlfriend. No one is completely blameless and no one, no matter how damaged, is worthless, Fukada seems to be saying, and it’s a sentiment that bears repeating.

At times, I wished that Park were a little less of a train wreck, which might have made Taeko’s history with him and her subsequent embrace of him when he returns a little more understandable. There were moments when he seemed a bit too much of an idiot savant for my taste, but, fortunately, just when you think you know exactly where the movie is heading, the story surprises you. Park turns out to have strange secrets of his own, and it was nice to see a movie that shows how flawed people can be helpful and infuriating at the same time.

Kimura Fumino, a luminous actress who has had many roles in which she is used chiefly for her delicate beauty, gives a remarkably nuanced performance. In her most moving scenes, she barely speaks a word, but these are the moments you will remember most clearly from the film.

Atom Sunada has a bizarre charisma in his role, while Kento Nagayama, who has what could have been a thankless role as the conventional husband, reveals the character’s depth with small gestures and looks.

Those who are open to a movie about coping with grief may find that Love Life lingers in their minds long after the closing credits roll.