A truck driver's midlife crisis crashes harder than any collision on the highway.
A married long-distance truck driver falls for a significantly younger waitress at a roadside diner. Their affair brings tragedy to themselves and those around them.
Acting
Tatsuya Nakadai's slow-burn collapse is masterclass in repressed devastation.
Cinematography
Highway loneliness captured in endless asphalt and neon-diner gloom.
Direction
Kurahara transforms pulp premise into genuinely tragic opera.
Director
Koreyoshi Kurahara
Tatsuya Nakadai
Seiji Tajima
Tomisaburō Wakayama
Naokichi Sakura
Takeo Chii
Yukio
Masumi Harukawa
Matsuyo
Miwako Fujitani
Kazue Komiya
Junko Ikeuchi
Yoshiko Tajima
Yoshiko Mita
Hideko
Hiroyuki Nagato
Boss of the Mizuya clan
Natsuko Fuji
Eri Tajima
Kyôhei Shibata
Minoru Shinozuka
Aoi Nakajima
Proprietress of Hanabishi
Takeshi Ōbayashi
Dispatch
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of Japan's 1980s 'jun-ai' (pure love) boom, which paradoxically fetishized destructive passion while moralizing against it. The genre's contradictions are on full display here.
Miwako Fujitani was 20 playing opposite 55-year-old Nakadai; the 35-year age gap was controversial even in 1986 and sparked debates about the male gaze in Japanese cinema.
JP
