Comments: Big surprise. Comparatively speaking, this is a plain and simple love story from Japan. One of the participants has legs that don't work so her granny pushes her around in a baby carriage but that comes off as beside the point. She's suffered and she's not expecting love to be a part of her life. She's not looking for it, but when it shows up, she gets it. She understands and appreciates it even though she knows with certainty that she will be lonely again. Chizuru Ikewaki brings a poet's depth to her role and Satoshi Tsumabuki is puppy dog cute as the boy who falls, surprisingly and so naturally, in love with her. This film could have been manipulative but it isn't, not in the least, and that's what is so refreshing about it. This is a bittersweet gem.
Summary: Tsuneo is a university student working part-time in a mah-jong parlour. Lately the customers have been talking about an old lady who pushes a baby carriage through the streets. They say she is carrying something for a crime syndicate, and they wonder what it is she has in the carriage... Money? Drugs? One day, the owner of the mah-jong parlour sends Tsuneo out to walk his dog. A baby carriage comes rolling down a hill and crashes into a guard rail. The old lady asks him to look into the carriage, where he finds a young woman clutching a knife. This is how Tsuneo first meets the girl who calls herself Josée. Her real name is Kumiko, and she is unable to walk, so her grandmother takes her out early every morning in the old baby carriage. To thank Tsuneo for his help, they offer him breakfast, and he begins to fall under the spell of the young woman's unusual charm. Kumiko has named herself after the heroine of a novel by Françoise Sagan, and Tsuneo comes to call this strange girl by that name. He grows more and more attracted to her.
Joze to tora to sakana tachi
2003
Japan
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish
