"I love you, but I am not yours."
"I love you, but I am not yours. I don't want to confine you or be confined."A story about love, and trust, and honesty. With beautiful colours, urban city scapes and quiet times filled with the actors' excellent non-verbal performance, the movie shows us how we cohabit space and share experiences.
"Can love be split up?"
"It's not that one is cut in half. It doubles."
The two main characters are in their thirties, experiencing love's ups and downs, and their differences and similarities shift as they grow as characters and people.
"Why did you marry her?" "Why couldn't you break up with her?"
The red string that connects every image in this movie and its characters to the viewers is love. I love it, too.
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... and if this never gets a sequel, I am happy with what we have. But I'd really like a sequel
Japanese BL movie, so I was scared about tragedy and a sad ending. Word on the street was so unclear about whether the so called "open end" of this movie comes with a positive or negative connotation, but ALL IS GOOD. All is good trust me. That open end is a serotonin high.This is a romance. The characters both had past relationships with women, 💜 🩷 💙 , and as the movie plays out, it's revealed that they are each other's professional and artistic inspiration. They're not just rivals.
Then they fall in love. It's implied that it's impossible for them to be together but my boy Suzuki was SMILING in that open end, AND there is this event in the last scenes, it's a stunning and incredible climax of the movie. It's on a level of delusion that it's either a mass hallucination, or 10Dance is coming in at a level of escapism that rivals Red White & Royal Blue, but we have to believe the impossible. We have to dream it into reality. Dance is about LOVE, and about the performers and the audience connecting. This movie does that, too.
The women deserve their own fluffy yuri spinoff. Tajima Aki and Yagamo Fusako are incredible characters, and good friends to Suzuku and Sugiki, and Suzuku and Sugiki are good friends in return. Truthfully, not always, but it is implied that the obstacles in their respective friendships in the end brought them closer together.
It's perfect. Obviously. Costuming is sexy as hell, and the music is phenomenal.
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This review may contain spoilers
Incredible: "Freedom Is Not A Coincidence", says the title of the last episode
This drama made me laugh and cry and ripped my heart out and danced on it, and it did so beautifully with a moon marriage and metaphors about freedom. HAPPY END FOR OUR LESBIAN MAIN COUPLE.It's cinematic. It's queer, it's wlw, it's lesbian, women take the stage. The women in this drama come alive through great acts of selflessness, of love, of sacrifice, and exercising their power. The women come alive through breaking the law, raging for justice in a misogynistic world, being mean, using violence as a defense; we the viewers are left to support women's rights and women's wrongs. This show is about all of that, and as a treat the women can go a little insane. The acting is top, from the main cast to the small roles, everyone gives their best and makes this world and the characters come alive.
Content Warning: sexual assault /rape, a male university teacher exploits a female student and then it ends in that very traumatic rape scene. She then murders the guy with scissors, stabbing him 19 times.
This drama is also about violence. Gendered violence connects all the women's stories like a red string. The side couples are heterosexual. There is straight romance, straight love, straight misery; and straight abusive relationships, though they take the b stage next to the lesbian relationship at the center.
This drama is also about grief. Grief for lost family members and friends and death and all that. This drama is also about freedom. Bell is unjustly imprisoned, her freedom taken away at the hands of others. This drama is also about humanity. Imprisoned, do we hold on to humanity? Love makes us monsters, and the loss of freedom makes us desperate. And yet we try to water the roses just right, so that they can bloom. There is a cat. If we can, we feed. it.
The cinematography is brilliant, the soundtrack is so fucking awesome, and there's an instant noodle ad where our girl Bell prepares the noodles and then takes a bite as the house she set on fire burns behind her, like, HELLO. That's what I want to see!!!!!
It's fucking brilliant and if you have 8 hours to spare and feel ready for the trigger warnings and their themes, you'll have a great time. I promise.
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