Closed Note

Japanese title: クローズド・ノート
Rating: PG
Running time: 138 minutes
Now out on DVD!

Some info:
1) IMDB
2) Official Site (Japanese)

To be honest, the first thing that drew me to the show is the casting of Sawajiri Erika and Takeuchi Yuko as the 2 important leads in the show. Somehow, I was curious to how they would work together on-screen, as from their past involvements in various shows, I have this impression that their styles are actually quite different.

Turns out that these 2 popular Japanese stars do not end up with any scene involving the both of them interacting as such. Sawajiri plays a teacher-to-be, Horii, who just moved into an apartment where she stumbles upon a diary left behind by the previous owner, later to be revealed as Takeuchi’s character, Mano. While it’s not nice to read other’s diary without their permission, usually the curiosity factor is a little too much to handle.

Through Horii’s reading of the diary, the movie carefully inserts scenes depicting the content of the diary during different parts of the show. This is done quite masterfully, giving viewers more things at a right pace, as well as suitably coinciding with Horii’s emotions and thoughts. There’s even clever use of overlapping (of course it’s not really “overlapping” while filming) imagination + reality in the same scene as Horii tries to experience what is described in the diary.

Both of them have played their roles well, and it turned out all right probably (or maybe it’s just my biasedness) due to an absence of direct involvement and interaction with each other. Each of the characters have their own space to develop and grow, be it through words conveyed or simply actions done on-screen. What’s sad is probably how the story develops and how each of them meet some form of tragedy/shock. Could potentially be an emotional film for some, but I was pretty much affected. Lol.

As for the meaning of the movie title, I think it should be the part towards the ending portion of the movie, where Ibuki’s “closed note” (actually folded into a paper airplane) proves to be of crucial importance. Quite fitting in my opinion. On a side note, the theme song of the movie is titled Love & Truth and is performed by YUI. It proved to be a hit back in 2007, where it topped Oricon charts quite a number of times.

Overall, it’s quite a nice movie to watch, with the production team pulling off some nice handling of movie elements to make this one a rather enjoyable experience. Simple to understand story with its own meaningful content. My take: 6.5/10

p.s. I couldn’t recognise that the (sort of) male lead of the movie acted as Morita in the H&C Live-action movie. Looks quite different…