Vaiburêta

Rei is a freelance writer embattled by personal demons. We first meet her in a convenience store where she is buying too much alcohol and not enough food. At the magazine rack she pauses to contemplate the happiness of the glamour girls on the glossies for which she writes. Only later do we realize that this is self-reflection. A chance encounter with truck driving Takatoshi, leads to a two day romp of sex, friendship and introspection. It's unclear if what happens to her is the product of her writer self imagining it all as a magazine serial (hence the inter-titles and voice of the narrator).

The relationship has a certain healing sweetness that comes out in simple daily pleasures of Japanese life, like a bath or a bowl of hot soba on a cold winter's day. It's a little fluffy, but this seems to be an intentional point of the story: the musings of a glamour writer reaching out to the young readers who struggle in silence with the pain brought on by the ultra-thin, ultra-beautiful ideal put forward by the magazines for which she writes.

In the end, it's a road-buddy picture that gives Western viewers a taste of the complex Japanese landscape that is both brilliant in its natural beauty and frightening in its industrialization.