Earlier this year, Japan’s Fuji-Q Highland amusement park advised coronavirus-conscious visitors to “scream inside your heart” while riding its roller coasters. The phrase could double up as a tagline for “All the Things We Never Said,” Yuya Ishii’s self-produced drama about the fraying relationships between three former high school friends.
The film’s protagonist, Atsuhisa (Taiga Nakano), certainly has things to scream about. His emotions are so bottled up, however, that he can’t even muster a response when he catches his wife, Natsumi (Yuko Oshima), in bed with another man. As the couple’s marriage collapses, their mutual friend, Takeda (Ryuya Wakaba), finds himself caught in the middle and powerless to avert the downward spiral.
Characters like Atsuhisa are a regular feature in Ishii’s work. If there’s a common thread running through his filmography, it’s his empathy for misfits: people who lack some essential quality that would enable them to move smoothly through life. His films can be as prickly as their characters, constantly chafing against expectations, although this formula tends to work better with bittersweet fare than with his attempts at pure comedy, such as last year’s ghastly “Almost a Miracle.”