Spirited away to a romance from the past

Sekai no Chushin De Ai o Sakebu

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)
Director: Isao Yukisada
Running time: 138 minutes
Language: Japanese
Currently showing

What does the audience want? What does it really want? The easy answer for producers has always been "more of what it wanted before." Thus the sequel. Thus the studio assembly lines for genre product. But the audience is a fickle, restless beast. Sequels often tank. The beloved genres of yesteryear -- the western, the samurai epic -- become box-office poison.

In Japan, however, one formula for success has not changed since the silents -- big tears equal big yen. Thus the ancient convention that love stories have unhappy endings, with one or both of the lovers often expiring in the last reel.

In the 1990s, however, this formula began to look creaky. Junya Sato tried to update it in 1992 with "Watashi o Daite Soshite Kiss Shite (Hug Me and Kiss Me)" by making the dying lover an AIDS victim (and a woman, to boot), but the audience stayed away.