This beautifully bleak account of a Tokyo daycare worker's obsession with her roommate captures the bittersweet pain of unrequited love.
Natsuko's co-worker Etsuko asks her how she feels about men. "Not for me," she says, "I won't degrade myself." Based on an actual newspaper story, Afternoon Breezes presents Natsuko's repressed lesbianism as a crush which evolves into an obsession with her roommate Mitsu. With lots of real-time sequences and a remarkably complex use of sound the film has surprisingly little dialogue, conveying meaning through a wonderfully simple use of action and objects.
Definitely not a "positive" lesbian portrayal, and yet immensely pleasurable as a really well-made film and as an intense portrait of a desperate crush on a straight girl!
Plot summary
Two young girls, Mitsu and Natsuko, share the same apartment. Natsuko is Lesbian and secretly in love with Mitsu. But Mitsu is heterosexual and has a boyfriend. In the hope of destroying the relation between Mitsu and her boyfriend, Natsuko seduces the boyfriend and also tries to influence him in other ways. Mitsu finds out and throws Natsuko out of the apartment. But Natsuko's love and possession remains. Secretly and never detected she follows and watches Mitsu, in particularly when she has fun with her boyfriend. She even finds Mitsu's garbage bag and eats the other part of a half-eaten apple to obtain some connection with her beloved. She is through and through permeated by a feeling of completely empty despair.
October 21, 2022 at 02:58 PM
Director
