Issue:
. . . at 6:45 on Tuesday, June 20 for a sneak preview of Shinichi Nishitani’s Marriage, starring heartthrob Dean Fujioka, who will join the director for the Q&A session after the screening. The long-awaited adaptation of the bestselling novel by Areno Inoue, the film thrusts us into the middle of a marriage hustler’s latest scam, and forces us to watch as he fleeces a bevy of lovely lonely hearts without flinching. Nishitani cleverly casts the swooningly handsome Dean Fujioka as Kenji Urumi, the conman with a dark secret in his past, opening the door to a more sympathetic appraisal. Kenji is not a hero, far from it – he separates his victims from their savings accounts, after all — but he’s also not quite a villain, not even in the eyes of his victims . . . or even his devoted wife.
(Japan, 2017; 118 minutes; Japanese with English subtitles.)
– Karen Severns
