Last letter (can't wait) Apparently, there were so many hipsters in China that Shunji Iwai felt the need to remind himself of himself, so to speak, by personal intervention. It is worth noting that Iwai is a well-known figure outside Japan and his films have always been very popular in the Far Eastern countries. For example, it was his “Love Letter” (or rather, the explosive success of the latter in the local film distribution) that gave impetus to the creation in South Korea of a number of melodramas with supernatural flores, such as “House by the Sea” or “The Same”, which later remake themselves and Hollywood. This is all to the fact that the fact of filming Iwai film in Chinese should not surprise anyone.
Yuan Zhihua, whose sister Jinan recently died, decides to attend a class alumni meeting to tell everyone about her death. There, she meets her first love Ying Chuan, who takes her for his sister (his first and only love) and pops out a WeChat number (a billion active users and the reason for the growing illiteracy among the Chinese population, but this is a topic for another conversation). Later, Chuan sends a declaration of love to the chat, which is noticed by Zhihua’s husband, furiously smashing his phone and half a movie after that throwing serious insults to his wife. Zhihua begins to send Chuan letters (real, paper) without a return address on behalf of his sister, he, unable to resist, finds the address of the real Jinan and his letter receives the daughter and niece of the deceased. Who, in turn, begin to send him letters, pretending to be Jinan, and trying to find out all the details of this intricate relationship, which lasts thirty years.
By the way, the fact that graduates are going to celebrate exactly the thirtieth anniversary is the strangest and (for me personally) inexplicable moment in the film. High school education in China lasts twelve years, which means that all graduates must be almost fifty. At the same time, Iwai recruits actors under forty – there is literally no person in the film who looks at the stated age in the plot. Some are too young to even fit in for a twenty-year anniversary. I don’t know what the endgame was here – it is possible that he will develop complexes for the entire Chinese nation, but this detail strongly knocks out of the narrative and is not logically justified.
In everything else, sabj is Iwai at its best. Melodrama, at the same time light, sentimental and strong, hitting the emotions. Drama from life - without add-ons and happy endings. The reality is cruel, beautiful and very understandable. The refrain in the plot is an excerpt from Zhinan’s graduation speech: Life is a series of important memories and amazing choices. Some dreams will come true and others will not, but we all have a future full of unique and endless possibilities. True words have never been spoken.
The funniest thing is that after working on the subj, Iwai went home to Japan and shot it for a while. Here we can only guess - whether he liked the result so much that he decided to repeat an encore, or the Chinese experience fell to the master categorically not to his liking. The Japanese caste is quite stellar: Takako Matsu, Hideaki Anno and Masaharu Fukuyama, so you will have to watch it and find out experimentally.