Tengoku no honya - koibi

2004
1h 51m

IMDb RATING

6.5/10

365

YOUR RATING

Drama Romance

KENTA (Tetsuji Tamayama), a young pianist who has just lost his job, is drowning his woes at a bar, when he meets a man in a Hawaiian shirt named YAMAKI (Yoshio Harada). He invites Kenta to ... Read allKENTA (Tetsuji Tamayama), a young pianist who has just lost his job, is drowning his woes at a bar, when he meets a man in a Hawaiian shirt named YAMAKI (Yoshio Harada). He invites Kenta to work with him, and the next thing he knows, Kenta wakes up to find himself in a room he ha... Read allKENTA (Tetsuji Tamayama), a young pianist who has just lost his job, is drowning his woes at a bar, when he meets a man in a Hawaiian shirt named YAMAKI (Yoshio Harada). He invites Kenta to work with him, and the next thing he knows, Kenta wakes up to find himself in a room he has never been in before. It is a strange room that seems to have no connection to life. He ... Read all

See production, box office & company info

IMDb RATING

6.5/10

365

YOUR RATING

See production, box office & company info

See more at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 nomination

Featured review

5/10

Pretty setting, serious themes, half-baked treatment

Unless you're addicted to prettily-shot romantic fluff with cute but skin-deep ideas (like bookshops in Heaven), the only reason to see this slow-moving, emotionally unfocused movie is the performances of Takeuchi Yuko and Kagawa Teruyuki. Takeuchi manages to give some appeal and depth to the two underwritten characters she plays. And Kagawa gives such a raw and discomfiting performance as a former fire-works maker in need of redemption that he seems out of place in a movie which otherwise prettifies pain.

As a whole, the movie fails to strike a balance between the cuteness of its set-up, and the seriousness of its themes of love and guilt, which it lingers over mournfully. It's neither light enough nor serious enough. And as we're expected to invest emotionally in so many characters, all of whom are underdeveloped, we end up investing in none of them.

The last scene is a beauty though.

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