Oscilloscope Labs debuted the official trailer for Love Life, a Japanese melodrama that follows a married woman living with her husband, who decides to care of her son’s long-lost father when he reappears, deaf, ill and homeless.
The film, inspired by a song of the same name from the album “Love Life” by musician Akiko Yano, stars Win Morisaki, Fumino Kimura, and Tomorô Taguchi.
Release Date
Directed by Kôji Fukada, Love Life world premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, followed by the North American Premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, and opens in cinemas with a release date of August 11, 2023.
Synopsis
Taeko (Kimura Fumino) and her husband Jiro (Nagayama Kento) are living a peaceful existence with her young son Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy’s long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with her pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping Park, who is deaf and currently homeless. With nuanced performances and craftsmanship, Love Life is a melodramatic and moving meditation on grief and acceptance.
Reviews
Love Life has received fairly good reviews, with Guardian writing, “It is a movie whose gentleness and sadness coexist with a strange sense of the absurd, preposterous and tasteless new twists that life can give you: a film to remind you, perhaps, of George Bernard Shaw’s dictum: “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” It is a rich, varied meal of a film.”
IndieWire review gave the film a B+, writing “While ‘“’Love Life’ has its fair share of sharply written heart-to-hearts, many of its most touching moments (and all of its most telling ones) hinge on a certain kind of emotional geography. It’s the way that Park, once unhoused, begins sleeping in the empty apartment across from Taeko and Jiro once the latter’s parents move out of town. It’s the reflections of sunlight that cut across Jiro’s eye-line from across the courtyard, and the way that Taeko is seen speaking to someone just out of frame as the messiness of her feelings spills over the clear borders we’re supposed to dig around them.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Love Life.