J: Seesaw

Keihiro Kanyama is director, writer, male protagonist.

"The film captures the ambiance of a young modern day couple — chic and ennui and all- — with free floating hand-held camera work and improvisation. On a seesaw, two people can enjoy a balancing act and feel the presence of the other without speaking a single word. Makoto is blessed with good friends, a rewarding job, and a peaceful life, but what happens when she loses that balance?" Keihiro Kanyama (from IMDb)

This is a simple plotline: Makoto and Shinji live together and are more or less happy as a couple. Shinji wants to marry; Makoto is not sure: perhaps it is because Shinji isn't perfect, perhaps it is because she has hopes that her career will be satisfying; perhaps she just isn't sure enough about anything to commit to marriage. She loses Shinji in an accident (we aren't given details) and realizes that she really needed him. The central metaphor is a seesaw: to stay in balance it needs one person on each side.

This is a casual film with little in the way of cinematography or soundtrack. The mood is "daily life".

I have no details on box office performance.

Makoto and Shinji. They live in a small apartment in Tokyo. She teaches Japanese as a free-lancer. He was trying to become an actor, now has a regular job of some sort. They have been living together for two years. Shinji wants to marry; Makoto wants to keep things as they are.

Takumi and Keiko. For our purposes they are the happy couple that gets married, bringing up the question of whether Makoto and Shinji should do the same.

Towards the end of the movie. Makoto is sitting on the toilette, grieving. Shinji has been dead for a while. "Don't leave me" is how she feels but she knows he is dead.