纳米比亚的沙漠

对于21岁的加奈来说，考虑自己的未来一点意思也没有：她不知道自己想要什么样的生活，对任何事都缺乏热情，甚至恋爱也只是为了消磨时间。与她同居的男友本田试图通过负担房租和为她做饭来取悦加奈，但这段恋情还是变得摇摇欲坠——加奈认识了一位名叫林的创作者，随着两人关系的加深，她开始觉得本田是个负担……

域2019

Aki and Naoko are childhood friends who are drifting apart as adults. Immersed in her family life, Naoko now has a husband and daughter; Aki, on the other hand, remains single and is on leave from work due to a personal crisis. The plot might sound familiar but it has never been told like this. The director Kusano Natsuka stages the interactions through an actors’ table-read and, as the lines are repeated, the scenes gradually develop into on-location conversations. Moreover, she repositions the dramatic peak of the story to the beginning: Aki has murdered Naoko’s daughter.　　Structurally inventive, Kusano's daring cinema implements ‘distantiation’ effects to get to the heart of friendship issues at times when life has settled. While the repetitions convey the suffocation of role patterns in both friendship and family, a line left out or added in unsettles and reminds us life can take unexpected turns.