Never before released in the U.S., Passion, the second feature from Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car), examines a series of intersecting love triangles as only he can, plunging headlong into the exposed-nerve confessions and unrequited attachments among a group of thirty-somethings. It begins when a couple, Kaho (Aoba Kawai) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto), announce their engagement to their friends over dinner, where it’s also revealed the groom had an affair years earlier. While the two spend the evening apart, Tomoya follows his friends to the apartment of his former classmate (Fusako Urabe), with whom he’s in love, and is led into ever more vulnerable and shocking exchanges of emotional honesty.
Though it was made as his student thesis project at Tokyo University of the Arts, Passion already displayed, with clearheaded precision, Hamaguchi’s peerless gift for elucidating the complexity of modern relationships and their intricate, frequently inexpressible wounds.
Click here to watch the trailer.
