Love Life (12A)

★★★✭ "Japanese director Kôji Fukada has crafted a richly painful and quietly comic,  tangled and tragic human drama about chaotic life twists." ~ The Guardian.

Kôji Fukada’s Love Life is a beguiling, beautifully paced portrait of a family navigating the aftermath of a tragedy.

Inspired by Japanese singer and musician Akiko Yano’s song “Love Life”, the film tells the story of Taeko and her husband Jiro who are living a peaceful existence with her young son Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy’s long-lost father, Park, back into Taeko’s life.

To cope with the pain and guilt she feels after the accident, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man for whom she feels a strong sense of responsibility. 

Kôji Fukada powerfully uses sign language in the film and has said of this choice that "I don’t have to come up with reasons to have hearing people in my films, so it would be unfair to ask for a reason to have a deaf person. Hopefully, this film will be a step towards this becoming the norm, where we don’t demand a special reason to have deaf people in films. That would be a great innovation to come out of this.’"

Languages:
Japanese, Korean and Korean Sign Language

Subtitles:
Full English