There’s no shortage of movies in Japan that tackle contemporary issues in a glib, soft-focus fashion, but films with a genuine social conscience are far rarer. “A Girl Named Ann,” Yu Irie’s based-on-a-true-story drama about a drug addict trying to turn her life around, belongs in the latter camp. The film, especially during its first half, is an engrossing and sensitively depicted portrayal of life at the margins of Japanese society, and features an impressive lead performance by Yumi Kawai.
She plays the eponymous heroine, a young woman with a backstory so grim it could have been written by Hanya Yanagihara. Raised by a violently abusive mother, Ann never finished elementary school and was forced into prostitution when she was just barely into her teens, picking up a meth habit a few years later.
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