Hyakuman-en to nigamushi onna

I love these 'search for self' type road-movies, and I've seen many of them, but this is among the best.

The movie starts with the protagonist Suzuko (Aoi Yuu) getting arrested for throwing out all of her roommate's belongings. The criminal record made it hard for her to stay home, so she saved up 1 million yen ($10000) to move to another town where nobody knows her. She repeats this process throughout the movie to keep her distance from others.

Aoi Yuu was incredible in this movie, her control of emotion was flawless, especially in the final scene. I never realized how skinny she was though... I really connected with the protagonist. In fact, I sympathized with her character to the point it felt like I was watching myself from couple years ago. All the other actors gave excellent performance as well.

Music in this movie matched all the scenes very well, even background noises served to heighten the tension etc. Great direction all around, and there were many beautiful scenes of various landscapes in Japan, from sea to mountain, countryside to city.

This film had many memorable scenes, and the story was very intriguing. I especially liked that line, "I don't want to search for myself, I'm here even if I don't want to be here." We all try to escape from reality sometimes, I'm sure this movie would give you courage to face your problems.