Dearest

For the First Time in the U.S.

Ken Takakura’s 205th film is a solemn and sublimely sober road movie featuring an all-star cast that includes "Beat" Takeshi Kitano and Tadanobu Asano, among other heavyweights of the acting world. The last star of the golden age of the studio era, now an octogenarian, Takakura plays Eiji Kurashima, an elderly, if still active, counselor at a prison in Toyama, a prefecture on the Japan Sea coast. His wife, Yoko (Yuko Tanaka), recently died of cancer at the age 53, leaving him with an illustrated card asking him to scatter her ashes in the harbor of the small Kyushu port where she was raised. Kurashima is puzzled by this request since she never mentioned it while she was alive, or said anything about her family for that matter, but he loads up his mini-van with supplies, as well as wooden furnishings he has handcrafted, and hits the road alone for Kyushu.

Japan. 2012. 111 min. 35 mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yasuo Furuhata. With Ken Takakura, Yuko Tanaka, Koichi Sato, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Kimiko Yo, Haruka Ayase.

Part of JAPAN CUTS 2013

TICKETS
$12/$9 Japan Society members, seniors and students

Buy tickets online or call the Japan Society Box Office at (212) 715-1258, Mon. – Fri. 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 5 pm.