Mar 21 (scmp.com) - Muddled and frustrating almost from the outset, Yoshihiro Fukagawa’s achingly sentimental weepie Love Like the Falling Petals struggles to tell its story with coherent clarity.
It offers a lament for the fleeting nature of existence while simultaneously bemoaning the financial and emotional burden the elderly impose upon their families.
Honoka Matsumoto plays a disarmingly youthful hairstylist who is stricken by a rare condition that causes her body to age rapidly, leaving her first love, played by Kento Nakajima, reeling.
Fukagawa resists the temptation to turn Keisuke Uyama’s novel into a Japanese version of M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, and instead presents a cautionary tale about the dangers of dragging one’s heels.
Haruto (Nakajima) has big dreams of becoming a photographer, but lacks the confidence or conviction to pursue them. That doesn’t stop him from lying to his hairdresser, telling the obviously impressed Misaki (Matsumoto) that he takes pictures professionally.
