A story of hopeless misery
Kawai Yuumi won the best actress award from the 2024 Japan Academy Film Prize for her performance in this film's depiction of drug addiction, domestic violence, prostitution, addiction recovery programs, self harm, child abandonment, social service failures, and the exploitation of the vulnerable in general. If you enjoy films like 2004's Nobody Knows, then this film is probably exactly the kind of thing you would like. It is a well-produced film based on a true story with all the endless misery and gritty realism one could want with fine performances by Kawai Yuumi as Ann and Sato Jiro as a police detective, Tatara, who tries to pull Ann out of the mire that her life is under the unrelenting abuse from her mother Harumi played by Kawai Aoba.Ann has been forced into prostitution by her mother since she was 14 and has been an intravenous meth addict for a couple of years when the film starts. She gets arrested when an abusive client overdoses, but an idiosyncratic police detective gets her enrolled in his addiction recovery program. She keeps being drawn back in reach of her mother because she loves and worries about what will happen to her disabled grandmother if she completely abandons the family. Any light suggested by Ann's road to recovery is only present in the film to be quashed in the denouement that made the news in Japan.
Both Kawaii Yuumi and Sato Jiro have excellent moments of portraying the anguish, grief and anger of these characters' lives. But, honestly, Kawaii had at least three more effective and moving scenes in her jdrama Kazoku Dakara Aishitan Janakute, Aishita no ga Kazoku Datta than anything in this film and I would direct anyone who is catching on to her talent to seek out that series long before diving into this film.
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