Alice is a woman who has it all: a beautiful house in a Paris suburb, a loving husband and two teenage children who can be difficult at times but would surely panic if their maman were to suddenly make herself unavailable. Still, Alice (Isabelle Carre) suspects something is missing, and her days are tinged with dark edges of discontent.
Then one day her younger brother, Nathan (Niels Schneider), drops in, takes a look around and tells her she's "not really alive." It's not all bad news though; he mentions finding a place in Japan that brought him peace. Nathan is killed shortly after and a despondent Alice decides to head off to the place he spoke of to find some much-needed closure.
Directed by Belgium's Vanja d'Alcantara, "Kokoro" offers not only a superb story but an awed and insightful interpretation of the Japanese mindset. Working from the original 2010 novel by Olivier Adam ("Le Coeur Regulier"), d'Alcantara penned the screenplay and traveled with her crew to the Oki Islands off the coast of Shimane Prefecture (though the locale remains unnamed in the story).