A STRANGER OF MINE (Japan – 2005)
Directed by: Kenji Uchida
Starring: Yasuhi Nakamura, Reika Kirishima, Kisuke Yamashita, Yuka Itaya

A fistful of characters, ping ponging through one Tokyo night and crossing and recrossing paths in a complicated series of intertwined orbits, A STRANGER OF MINE is a movie that says no one is alone, even when they’re in the bedroom with the door locked. Starting out as a sweet romance, STRANGER spends its first half hour tracking the lives of Miyara (Yasuhi Nakamura) and Maki (Reika Kirishima). Miyara dumped her fiancé in a fit of jealousy and now she’s wandering the nighttime streets with all her worldly belongings in tow. Maki is a salaryman who bought an apartment for his new girlfriend, Ayumi (Yuka Itaya) who promptly dumped him before the ink was even dry on the lease. The two meet up in a restaurant and a take a tentative step towards moving on together.

And that’s when director Kenji Uchida pulls the rug out. Rewinding the day, we realize that this is actually a detective story involving Maki’s private investigator pal, Miyara (Kisuke Yamashita), who’s hot on the trail of the elusive Ayumi. But just when you think you’re following the plot, there’s another reversal, and then another. The same scenes are shuffled and re-shuffled like a deck of cards, seen from other points of view, and as money is stolen, car accidents are avoided, phone calls are made, and people hide behind doors and under beds, director Kenji shows us a world where everything we do has immediate consequences and no one lives in a vacuum. Winning a fistful of awards and enjoying a successful three month run in Japan, A STRANGER OF MINE is one of the best new Japanese movies of 2005. And make sure you stick around for the final punchline, buried deep within the closing credits.