I used to attract proselytizers, usually some variety of Christian, when I was thumbing around the United States in the early 1970s. Unlike most drivers who offered me rides, they didn't want a captive ear for their personal confessions or rants. Instead they relentlessly quizzed me on the state of my soul. Was I twice-born — or hell-bound?
The Japanese, as Ryuhei Yoshino's debut feature "Akaboshi" (literal translation: "Morning Star") shows us with insider precision, sell religion differently. When a single mom (Park Romi) and her tween son Tamotsu (Aren) are approached on a train platform by members of the Guiding Star cult, they are offered not pamphlets threatening perdition, but kindness and sympathy.
Mom, who is still desolated after being abandoned by her husband several months earlier, collapses with tears of relief. She has found people who understand and care — that is, the blessed opposite of her hectoring, self-centered sister, all she has left of family.