Review of Love Life / ラブライフ, directed by Koji Fukada

Often, when I’m looking to rot my brain, I watch English language movies. When I don’t want to think too hard I tend to default to these kinds of movies, even though I’ve studied multiple languages at this point and should be watching other movies to upkeep these skills.

As someone who has immense pride for watching a ton of international movies, I don’t like falling into this habit. I don’t like comfort zones too much, so I try to push myself out of a rut once I see myself going in that direction. That said, once I finished my master’s thesis, I intentionally began shifting towards Asian cinema again.

I also tackled the issue of the fact my to watch list across platforms is probably over a thousand titles. Because I only get a certain amount of credits on my library Kanopy account each month, I was specifically trying to tackle this account before I move abroad.

That is where I found Love Life. It was the first Japanese movie I had watched in a hot minute, and it certainly did not disappoint!

Let’s get into the review before I ramble too much!

After the tragic death of her young son, a woman finds his father coming back into his life.

At the beginning of this movie, our main character, Taeko, is preparing for a celebration. She lives in a small, standard Japanese apartment with her husband Jiro, and a son from another relationship: Keita. They’re planning a surprise for Jiro’s elderly parents, as one of their birthdays is coming up.

The surprise works well for the parents, and in a later celebration, everyone is having fun and chatting around while eating and playing games. For some reason, Taeko left a bathtub full of water, and Keita wanders into the bathroom when no one is looking.

He looks into the tub and is playing with a toy, then falls in. Unable to stand up, he eventually starts drowning, and no one realizes until Taeko begins calling for him. She wanders into the bathroom, where she finds him and starts screaming, effectively cutting through all the noise and chatter.

Unfortunately, Keita does not make it. Taeko is devastated by this, and the funeral has a large number of people in attendance. As Taeko struggles with getting through the ceremony to begin with, a man who looks homeless wanders in, and aggressively starts making hand motions at her.

She breaks down then, and we learn through the subtitles that this is Park, the father of Keita. Taeko and Park were a thing way back in the day, but now Park is homeless, sick, and unable to hear, as he is deaf. He also uses Korean Sign Language, as he is ethnically Korean.

From this point onward, Taeko realizes that Park is back in her life, and she can’t just leave him like this. Both are grieving the loss of their son, but she and her husband help Park get an apartment. Jiro is hesitant about all of this, but supports his wife and believes in the strength of their own bond to survive.

As Taeko continues caring for Park and helping him out, it helps her with her own journey of grief. As we see in the little moments throughout the film, little things and reminders can set her off, but it’s through this new focus that she can begin to understand and cope with the situation she’s found herself in.

Overall Thoughts

I found this movie to be interesting in a variety of ways. Not only is the relationship between Park and Taeko compelling, and I wanted to know more about their backstory, but it’s about moving on from a tragedy.

I did not really read the synopsis going into this movie, and I was surprised when I saw what was to come when Keita fell into the bathtub. I think this movie could have gone poorly without a decent script, and it holds up to the standards I have when I see the movie.

However, I don’t think I could rewatch this any time soon. It wasn’t my favorite, but I could appreciate the film and its themes as I watched it.

Go watch it if you have not already and want to!

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