The Cinematheque

“Iwai proves [himself] to be an important new director, capable of touching his audience while always staying a step ahead of them.”

Suzanne Weiss, TIFF

Iwai Shunji’s feature debut is still, to many, his most perfect film, one infused with both classical and ​’90s-specific ideas of melodrama, and a tonal range that capably switches between haunted seriousness and flickers of lively comedy. Idol singer Nakayama Miho plays dual roles. As Hiroko, she enters the plot still mourning her dead fiancee, killed in a mountain-climbing accident. When, as a private act of desperate remembrance, she mails a letter to his old address, she receives a reply from Itsuki, who shares her deceased lover’s gender-neutral name and is also played by Nakayama. The forking-path narrative that unfolds is too subtle to be simply called a J‑drama by way of Krzysztof Kieślowski, but is just as full of magical and coincidental reverie as that pitch suggests. Originally conceived as a black-and-white Ozu-influenced drama, by the time cameras rolled Iwai found his own voice, one enhanced by Horikawa Reimi’s heartbreaking score and Shinoda Noboru’s winter-set cinematography.

In Japanese with English subtitles

Love Letter will be preceded by a video introduction from director Iwai Shunji.

“This drama [is] far more substantial than merely a saga of unrequited love … Shinoda Noboru’s widescreen camerawork is magnificent.”

David Stratton, Variety

“In my stories, the most important thing is we don’t know each other … Sometimes people think of their partner, ​‘It’s mine, she’s mine, he’s mine. Everything. I’m him, I’m her.’ That’s what Hiroko thought when she loses her partner, and then she [gains access] to memories she never knew.”

Iwai Shunji