One Million Yen Girl

2008, 121 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Yuki Tanada. With Aoi Yu, Mirai Moriyama, Pierre Taki.

"Aoi Yu shines as an unlikely ex-con in Yuki Tanada’s pleasing and quietly winning road movie."  – Kozo, Love HK Film

Yuki Tanada takes the road movie to a completely off-the-beaten-path track, tuning into the fears and dreams of the devil-may-care freeter generation and the universal yearnings of young people with few friends and no jobs.

The film is the hopelessly endearing exile story of ne’er-do-well 21-year-old Suzuko (Aoi Yu, Hula Girl), an impossibly endearing type who is herself, somewhat hopeless, but also wise to the ways of the world and by no means dumb enough to be happy with her lot.

After a bad pick of roommate lands her a brief stay at the police station, Suzuko decides that enough is enough: she hits the road alone with a tiny suitcase, a determined but restless heart, and a mission: save ¥1 million ($10,000), go away… repeat. Hopping from place to place, she ekes out a living taking on different temp jobs. As she crosses paths with various people whose lives she changes, will love finally come her way?

In the end, this is a film contagiously in love with its own actress and her undiluted charm, and a story that asks all the right (and wrong) questions.

Part of Japan Cuts: Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema

TICKETS 
$12 / $8 Japan Society members, seniors & students

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