Typically thieves enter a house, steal things and get out. This time an unsuspecting thief enters a home to steal as much as he can and instead is faced with an occupant inside the house. There is a woman within who is going to commit a murder. She is also about to set the place ablaze. The thief stops her and in the process the criminal becomes the one stopping a crime. The situation is connected to a case from some twenty years go.
Acting
Yamazaki's hollow-eyed thief carries decades of unspoken weight.
Direction
Shinohara lets silences scream louder than dialogue ever could.
Director
Tetsuo Shinohara
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Shinohara filmed the house interiors in chronological story order so Yamazaki could physically embody the character's psychological thaw.
The film quietly references the 'burnt field' motif in Japanese literature—landscapes of destruction that paradoxically enable renewal, from Mishima to post-3.11 cinema.
JP
