Kakera: A Piece of Our Life

A was surprised when bframe informed me of the existence of a lesbian Mitsushima Hikari movie.I've got a whole heap of movies in my to be watched queue but I definitely had to check this out. Written and directed by Ando Momoko, sister of Ando Sakura, Kakera is less a lesbian film and more a movie about finding oneself.

Mitsushima Hikari is Haru, a university student stuck in a relationship as a mistress of a guy who doesn't treat her right yet Haru is not able to move past the loveless relationship. One day she meets Riko, a very straightforward medical prosthetic maker who nampas Haru in a cafe.

Haru and Riko strike up a frienship and Riko wants to pull Haru away from her abusive relationship (with two implied rape scenes) while Haru is reluctant to leave her boyfriend. Its easy to say its a movie about a girl who's in a cold straight relationship who experiments with the same sex, its more about as the title suggests Haru trying to fill up this hole in her life.

Execution wise, very indie movie style. While Kakera does have interesting dialogue, it does tend to feel like the writer/director Ando Momoko is trying to say something through the movie instead of the characters saying it.

Its also got the indie movie inconclusive ending where not much happens and lots of stuff has to be inferred. I don't like things being spelled out for me but its basically your everyone's improved as human beings, blah blah blah everyone moves on movie. At least we don't have all characters meeting in the end and someone saying everyone's gotten stronger. The most out there thing is the water bottle turning into bird scene and the flock of birds in the end. Its like Ando Momoko wanted to make this visually psychedelic movie but didn't know how.

If Kakera had the visual quality of say Koreeda's Air Doll, it would have stood out for me. As it is, its just another quirky interesting movie that didn't linger long in my mind.