We’re nearly three years into the pandemic and yet there have been few films in Japan, or elsewhere for that matter, themed on this global contagion. This stands in contrast to the on-screen treatment of the Great East Japan Earthquake, a tragedy that inspired dozens of domestic films. The reason is something of a mystery, though one factor is doubtless visual: Actors talking through masks are not exactly cinematic.
So Mayu Nakamura’s “She Is Me, I Am Her,” a four-part omnibus film that makes the isolation and loneliness of the pandemic its central theme, is an outlier, and a welcome one at that.
Scripted by Nakamura, each segment features characters donning masks, but the pain of the four main protagonists — all played by the versatile and accomplished singled-named Nahana — is anything but muffled. The film makes an eloquent case for the value of creatively examining the pandemic’s impact on lives in Japan, both ordinary and not-so-ordinary. Also, despite their connecting theme, the four segments function well as standalone playlets, with Nahana completely inhabiting four distinctly different characters in an acting tour de force.