Waga koi seshi otome

"It's great to be alive. I feel this way about it: only people who've been near to death can appreciate how precious it is to be alive. And also, those who understand how precious it is will not live life mindlessly."

Such a sweet little film from Keisuke Kinoshita. It's got a radiant leading lady (Kuniko Igawa), beautiful pastoral cinematography, and touching post-war sentiments expressed through a simple love triangle. It's a little saccharine when viewed today, but must have felt like a salve of sorts to 1946 Japan, expressing as it does the need for acceptance of those wounded by the war, the virtues of self-sacrifice, and appreciating life despite its disappointments.

The film offers an interesting glimpse into another time and place, where the culture permitted a boy who had grown up with an adopted sister to consider marrying her, and no one is the least conflicted by it. The story isn't very fleshed out relative to its darker aspects, e.g. Why the mother committed suicide, what life was like when the young man went off to war, etc, but the latter may have been touchy during the American occupation, and I suppose they weren't the point anyway. The scene at the festival when his emotions swell, fireworks blasting away in the sky, is a fine one. Towards the end the film gets a little drawn out after the resolution has been made clear, but there's a lot to like about this one.