This year, Venice's new press conference room opened to a remarkable moment: an actor took questions from journalists using sign language, interpreted in real time. Sunada Atom is deaf, but that didn't keep him from every part of the promotional circuit—press interviews, the red carpet, the main hall—for Love Life, directed by Kōji Fukada, in which he plays one of the lead roles. In his performance, he offers a portrait of Deaf culture and social interaction that feels both nuanced and lived-in.
The two main characters are Taeko and Jirō, newly married. Taeko has a son from her previous marriage; her first husband, who is deaf, abandoned them suddenly. Jirō grows close to the boy and readily becomes his father. But Jirō's parents disapprove of the marriage—not because they dislike Taeko, but because they want a "real" grandchild, not an adopted one. They wish their son had married a woman without such a complicated past. In one of the early scenes, Jirō's mother and he converse in sign language to keep Jirō from hearing them. Since both can speak, we gather they probably used this language with his father when he still lived with them.
A sudden tragedy brings Park, Taeko's ex-husband, back into her life. The loss cuts through all of them, and it forces a pause—a moment when the characters look back, reckon with their choices, and confront people who belonged to their past lives and never really left. Jirō, too, must face his ex-girlfriend, someone he never managed to cut ties with because they work at the same company. For Taeko, her bond with her ex-husband carries another weight: few people in Japan know Korean sign language, so her role as interpreter becomes crucial—but it also creates new friction with her new husband.
Fukada always works tragedy into his films to test his characters. He finds the pivot points of their lives in unexpected calamity. He never does it cruelly. He follows his characters down a path that seemed safe and level, before the road gives way to sudden holes, speed bumps, steep climbs that were invisible from a distance. The pain that follows is real—though never gratuitous—and so is an almost unbearable tenderness. This is a film that asks you to look inward, hoping you might find something good and beautiful even as everything threatens to slip away.
The film opened in theaters on September 6, 2022.