Memories of Matsuko

I borrowed a Japanese series from a friend and there's this movie in the DVD. I was curious so I watched it.

The introduction to this movie was very artistic, so I continued watching. It was very interesting. It's about a woman named Matsuko-something, I forgot. It started with a hopeless guy named Sho with his nagging girlfriend saying something that totally unnecessary: how hopeless he was. Then came his father told him to clean his deceased aunt's extremely dirty apartment whom he never knew existed. To make the story short, he was curious about this aunt since his father mentioned how worthless her life was.

So he met some people who knew his aunt and he started to know about her through their stories: flashbacks from her troubled childhood, short-lived teaching job, and problematic abusive lovers. Then after her fifth (or something) lover, whom she loved so much left her, she went into a depression which left her staying in a rundown apartment, became obsessive to a teen idol, yet she tried to get treatment from a hospital which led her to meet her old friend.

In her attempt to get her life back, it ended tragically, while her nephew learned that her life wasn't worthless after all (he saw it in a some kind of a vision).

All these stories were wrapped nicely in a combination of musical, tragedy, comedy, and slapstick. You can find typical Japanese dark-and sometimes somehow perverted-humor in it, yet it's enjoyable. Since it's partly musical, the theme song of this movie will ring in your mind for days, yet you can't actually sing it since it's in Japanese. There are tunes of "What a friend in Jesus" and "Amazing grace" in different lyrics.

Oh well, enough with spoilers. I recomended this movie for those of you who like artistic stuff, not just a mere entertaiment (even though this one left me shedding tears and feel depressed).