Jun Ichikawa/ Japan 2007/ 97 min/ 15/ Japanese with English subtitles

Everyone has to become the different characters that social situations dictate: the friend, the lover, the child, but the list is longer and more complicated for those of us who have other people’s roles to play as well as our own. For Juri Oshima (Riko Narumi) our young protagonist in Jun Ichikawa’s critically lauded film, this is exactly the problem.

We see them acknowledge the real through the virtual

As Juri’s parents separate, she becomes increasingly aware of having to divide herself and begins to question what is the ‘real’ her and what is the ‘fake’ her. In some kind of Stranger Than Fiction, moment, Juri begins to write a story about another school girl and the real life Hani (Atsuko Maeda) starts to act out the role of this popular, but seemingly fictional, girl as Juri dictates.

Playing very much with the idea of a virtual self with repeated scenes where the children text and email one another, Ichikawa seems to be questioning not only how we find our identity as we grow up but how the lines between real and fake become blurred in our increasingly technological society. The girls turn out great performances, with the only flaw being a little too much time staring at phones, which tends to suck momentum from the piece. Where it really works is towards the end, as the girls confront one another against a black back drop we see them acknowledge the real through the virtual, a startling and evocative image. Here the love isn’t for men or parents, it’s for each other: two school girls in the same predicament and helping each other through it. A sentiment that has somehow gone awry in Western culture where women are so often pitted against one another.

Showing @Filmhouse March 13th at 17:45 as part of Girls On Film festival,