Just watched: Real

Real is a film released in 2013 starring Ayase Haruka and Satou Takeru as two lovers: Atsumi and Koichi. Atsumi is in a coma after a failed suicide attempt, and Koichi is using a new method to send himself into her thoughts in order to talk to her, and try to discover why she tried to kill herself.

It all looks great. The fictional world of the comatose Atsumi is nicely realised. Sometimes solid, sometimes indistinct, and the other people who “live” in her world are convincingly false and somewhat unnerving.

Supporting actors include Nakatani Miki and Odagiri Joe. Mind you, almost everything I see these days seems to have Odagiri Joe in it. It’s not a deliberate choice, honest.

The story, though, is a bit of a strain. The twist halfway through is easy enough to predict, and the film even puts in a few things to prompt you in case you can’t see it coming. But even so, once the story has changed, the viewer is expected to forget what happened before.

And the ending, too, isn’t terribly well thought out. Having spent all that time creating such a convincingly weird world, the final scenes are a bit of a change in style. So this film, while being great for the eyes, is not so great for the brain. Worth a look, though.