Asia Premiere

Love makes fools of us all.

Such is the case with Rumi, her sister Aki, and a woman named Rie. The three are tied to Ryosuke, a laid-back lothario who likes to love and leave ladies. Rumi and Aki were never on the same wavelength as arrogant Aki has dreams of stardom and despises the riotous Rumi but sharing a lover makes their relationship worse and sharpens their cruelty to each other. Meanwhile the mousy Rie is cast adrift and left seeking love from increasingly disappointing quarters. Over the course of seven years, other would-be lovers get ensnared in their tangle of relationships that, to viewers, looks absent of romance and full of embarrassment.

Theatre troupe leader EMOTO Junko combines stage and cinema with It Must Be Love, a work in which she and her ensemble cast opened the movie site/stage to an “audience” and utilised them and their ideas to make a multiple-perspective/timeline cringe-comedy of love sending people loopy. [Jason MAHER]