Ryuichi Hiroki	...	(Director)
Ryuichi Hiroki	...	(Writer)
Ken Mitsuishi	...	Osamu
Kumi Takiuchi	...	Miyuki
Tamae Andô	...
Tokio Emoto	...	Hayato
Ena Koshino	...
Kengo Kôra	...	Miura
Kazuki Namioka	...
Misako Renbutsu	...	Saori Yamazaki
Atsushi Shinohara	...	Yamamoto
Shuri	...
Masahiro Toda	...

Comments: A Fukushima pity party. Can't blame the guy, though, Fukushima is his hometown. And/but, as far as it being a worthwhile portrait of survivors, it's a bit lugubrious.

This is one for @plsletitrain to run far far away from. I loved all the long shots of people in moving vehicles staring pensively out the window. And there's a lot of them. A lot of them. A lot of really long, silent shots of people in moving vehicles staring pensively out the window. I loved them. And Huroki's choice of music is superb--a cross between Brian Eno and Eric Satie. It's only when people opened their mouths I found myself bored. Hiroki's River suffers from this same fate. Again, like Sono, Hiroki makes films that are important to him about stuff ... well, it's not that it isn't important to me. It's just not done well. People screaming, trying to be emo. It's the fog that happens when a writer/director tries to force things onto characters in a film for the sake of making a point or telling a story. "Yeah, farming isn't really an option for you farmers any more. Yes, I can sell you a cemetery plot, but you can't bury your bones here because they are contaminated." I'm so bummed out by this Wikipedia Article dialog.

So how was the lead actress? Kumi Takiuchi. She's great at staring pensively out the window of a moving vehicle, but she doesn't cry well and her eating-acting chops are not worth writing home about. Hiroki has her perform the exact same sex scene as Lee Eun-woo does in Kabukicho Love Hotel. The one where she masturbates a client while riding his balls (because hostess rules prevent them from fucking). Not even close! Lee Eun-woo made you want to download in your pants. Kumi Takiuchi made you want your money back. Her agent should have noticed this and demanded the scene be cut. I enjoyed her for the most part but she basically let Hiroki call the shots to make her look good. She just responded. She didn't bring her A-game and take control of the situation. She didn't force the film to reckon with her the way top-tier actresses do.

So, a bit of a let down. It's a beautiful film. Lovely in so many ways, but it's two hour run time is too much. If all the speeches of sorrow were cut out, and the film were left as a portrait of people in moving vehicles staring pensively out the window, it would have kicked buttocks. As it stands, I'll never want to watch it again. It's an "Oh no, don't shoot! Oh man, that was a terrible shot. What were you thinking?"

Summary: Based on the novel "Kanojo no Jinsei wa Machigai ja Nai" (literal translation: Her life is not at fault) by Director Hiroki, it is a powerful story of survivors, who are all trying to find their own silver linings in life.