A Girl Missing: the journey of FUKADA Kooji’s protagonist in this drama is a sad one, a tale of what may happen to the blameless simply by a chance connection, as well as a pair of misguided revenge plots. The film, nicely edited by FUKADA himself, moves slowly between two different (and smartly made easily distinguishable) timelines but allows the protagonist to change and shift as the story progresses. TSUTSUI Mariko plays the gentle caregiver who has her life uprooted when one of the girls in the house she works is abducted, and she gives a nice, layered, painful performance; ICHIKAWA Mikako, as the eldest sister in that house who displays great affection for the protagonist, gives a particularly sad performance. Effectively shot by director of photography NEGISHI Ken’ichi. The final result is interesting, if not fully exciting.