Helen's Blog /

The Million Yen Girl shown at Udine Far East Festival involves a 21 year old student who heads for the road after experiencing disappointment with her family and disillusionment with the difficulty of earning a living in Tokyo. Wanting to become independent, she co-rents an apartment with a total stranger who throws out a kitten she adopted, after which she tosses all his owning out the window and gets the book for alienation of private property. After a short term in jail, her welcome home is cold and she can count on no support from her family or friends, neither moral nor financial.

Finding a job at a beach resort quick-food counter, she starts to save up a million yen so she can pay the deposit for lodgings in the next town of her journey. Then she moves on to the real countryside and works on a peach farm. The people are friendlier there but locals, once they catch glimpse of her Tokyo profile and elegance, try to force a representation role on her, for promoting the region as "Peach Girl". Forced to admit she is an ex-con, she then moves on to a household goods store job, located 100 kilometers outside Tokyo and thinks she has found love when a co-worker pursues her and seems considerate about her problems.

What happens next is a twist that only viewers should find out, but the freshness of this Japanese road story has won appraise for the young female Japanese filmmaker Tanada Yuki, for its graceful direction and depiction of several different areas in Japan and differing characters of inhabitants. The film won a new "Audience Award" at this year's closing night ceremony of the festival, proving that the theme and depiction of the problems of the young heroine are close to young people's concerns, whatever the country, even in Northern Italy.