INITIATION LOVE | イニシエーション・ラブ (Japan, 2015)
Directed by: Yukihiko Tstsumi
Starring: Shota Matsuda, Atsuko Maeda, Fumino Kimuro

Steeped in the culture of ’80s Japan, Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s adaptation of Kurumi Inui’s novel is cinematically playful and emotionally sophisticated in its coming-of-age tale of a young man, Takkun, navigating his responsibilities as an adult and his confused emotional attachments to two women. Takkun finds the girl of his dreams in his Shizuoka hometown in the form of Mayu, a pretty, simple, and always sunny girl-next-door type. But when his office transfers him to Tokyo, he finds himself in a more sophisticated world and attracted to his well-bred colleague Miyako. The title refers to a question posed by Miyako to Takkun: are his feelings for Mayu merely “initiation love”—a puppy love that does both a disservice as the years pass. As Takkun slides into an affair with Miyako, he has to make a series of difficult choices that will define him as a man. The Japanese promotion of the film emphasizes the twist in the film’s final five minutes (which take a radically different course from the ending of the novel) in a conclusion that is not just a cinematic coup d’etat but also reveals a painful truth about love that is a lesson for all men and women.