Love Life

Taeko (Fumino Kimura) lives in a small Japanese city with her husband Jiro (Kento Nagayama) and her eight-year-old son Keita, from a previous marriage to deaf Korean-Japanese Park Shinji (Atom Sunada). Following a tragic accident, Park reappears in Taeko’s life; Taeko is the only person who can communicate with Park, who is now destitute, using Japanese sign language, and this disrupts Taeko and Jirō’s already unstable relationship. Through acute observation and brilliant, naturalistic performances, acclaimed Japanese director Kōji Fukada’s (Harmonium) seemingly mundane suburban settings become ambiguous and unsettling. Fukada explores the flawed emotional relationships of conservative, conventional middle class family life and everyday social order. Sign language is brilliantly used in Love Life as a link and division between the characters, and this is beautifully reflected through visual details of gestures.