Breathe In, Breathe Out 深呼吸の必要 (Shinkokyu no hitsuyo) [2004] • Japan

This is a feel good ensemble piece that doesn't do anything special except offer a couple hours quality time spent in Okinawa. The performances are all quite good despite a cliched script. It's about a group of six or seven people who are escaping something and come to cut sugar cane for a month in the countryside. When they are just hanging out and playing around it's a lot of fun but each time it tries to get dramatic and the characters reveal what it is they are escaping from, you gotta roll your eyes. It's not that big a deal, though. The discourses are short and the director seems to know that the drama isn't the selling point. It's the bonding of some drifting souls with each other and with their marvelous Okinawan host family. The film doesn't aim very high and is better for it because it does seem to hit right what it's aiming for. A nice diversion from more serious films.

★★★★

Director: Tetsuo Shinohara
Starring: Sayaka Kaneko, Karina, Saburo Kitamura, Sayaka Kuon, Masami Nagasawa, Hiroki Narimiya, Nao Omori, Shosuke Tanihara
IMDb 7.0/10 85 votes