Love Letter (1995)

When exchanging letters two women discover new things about a man they knew.

Director:

Shunji Iwai

Writer:

Shunji Iwai

Stars:

Miho Nakayama, Etsushi Toyokawa, Bunjaku Han

14 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Miho Nakayama	...	Itsuki Fujii / Hiroko Watanabe
Etsushi Toyokawa	...	Akiba Shigeru
Bunjaku Han	...	Female itsuki's mother
Katsuyuki Shinohara	...	Female itsuki's grandfather
Miki Sakai	...	Itsuki Fujii as a young girl
Takashi Kashiwabara	...	Male itsuki fujii
Ken Mitsuishi	...	Abekasu
Emiko Nagata	...	Harumi
Kaori Oguri	...	Suzumi
Naoki Gotô	...	Ootomo
Toshiya Sakai	...	Driver
Keiichi Suzuki	...	Male itsuki's father
Tomorô Taguchi	...	Female itsuki's father
Hiroshi Kanbe	...	Haruo
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mariko Kaga	...	Male itsuki's mother

Storyline

Hiroko Watanabe's fiancé Itsuki died two years earlier in a mountain climbing accident. While looking through his high school yearbook, Hiroko in a fit of grief decides to write a letter to him using his old school address. Surprisingly she receives a reply, not from the dead Itsuki, but from a woman with the same name whom had known Hiroko's fiancé in school. A relationship develops between the two women as they continue to exchange letters and share memories of the dead Itsuki.

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Plot Keywords:

friend | friendship | kiss | caught kissing | restaurant | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG for brief mild language

Did You Know?

Trivia

Scenes set in Kobe were actually shot in Otaru. Kobe gets very little snow, whereas Otaru being farther north (on the island of Hokkaido) gets considerable snowfall. In the scene under the opening credits of the film, Hiroko walks through deep snow to a group of houses downhill. She actually starts walking along the lowermost portion of a ski run on Mt. Tengu that terminates in the street where the houses are found. Otaru stretches out below the houses, with Ishikari Bay of the Sea of Japan on the horizon.

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Quotes

Male itsuki fujii: [Checking out books from the female Itsuki in the school libray. The male Itsuki holds up five checkout cards that he has been the first to sign like a poker hand. He speaks in English] Fujii Itsuki straight flush.

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Connections

Referenced in It's Entertainment (2014)

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Soundtracks

Girlfriend
Written by The Pillows
Performed by Remedios

User Reviews

Epic love story

Love Letter: 9/10

The first 30+ minutes of "Love Letter" were quite boring, but if you ever watched the movie again, knowing how the plot unfolds, they'd be anything but boring. The premise of this is cool and a little creepy: a woman, enstranged by her husband's untimely death, sends a letter to his old address. She knows that the house was knocked down and built over by a highway years ago, but does it anyway, perhaps out of desperation. Unexpectedly, she gets a reply. From there, the story begins, and it takes a much different direction than how the plot sounds on paper. I can't really say too much without spoiling it, but this is a tragic movie, yet beautiful at the same time. There are flashback sequences that make you really care about several characters in the movie, including the deceased man (who is shown as a school boy in the flashbacks). This is so well set out, and almost brought me to tears at times. Movies like this are what make me want to see more and more Asian cinema, because this was an absolute epic.

Details

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Release Date:

10 July 1998 (USA)

Also Known As:

When I Close My Eyes

Filming Locations:

Nobeyama, Japan

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$454,754

Company Credits

Production Co:

Fuji Television Network

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1