Can see where they were going with it, but it's poorly executed.

Where do I begin....

After reading a few comments mentioning the snail pace of the movie, the awkward intimacy, the uncomfortable age gap, and still deciding to watch it - what surprised me the most is that none of those aspects are the ones that bothered me. From the first 5 minutes of the movie, I even thought I'll come to like it (ooh boy).

What did bother me is the normalization and romanticisation of the foundations of this relationship.

Sakurai is a 37 year old man who acts as if he has never been in a relationship before, and hence he does not know how to behave and control himself. He is displayed as the type of person to pick up a hobby (such as caring for a houseplant) and then neglecting and abandoning it after the novelty wears off. He proceeds to intrude on and quickly advance with a new housebody, the 19 year old Yoichi.

Yoichi lives a lonely life despite the fact that he's surrounded by 3 other tenants; whose backgrounds, personalities or significance are non-existent, as the only purpose they serve is to not only overlook the problematic advancement of this middle-aged stranger on their vulnerable 'friend', but to even encourage it, since that's probably cheaper than therapy.

Yoichi is just a kid who grew up surrounded by the rumour that his parents committed suicide together, hence abandoning their unloved son. His fist ever sexual awakening occurs due to a simple coincidence that Sakurai could guess what he was painting and could sense happiness emanating from Yoichi when he paints.

The setting couldn't be simpler - An emotionally stunted, depressed boy with daddy issues projects his need for a father figure and a sexual partner onto Sakurai, who, as a pent-up workaholic, can not keep it in his pants and upon realizing that he bit off more than he could chew, runs away. The only sensible thought that man coughed up was that their generation gap makes him uncomfortable.... and then proceeded to give the already constipated boy mixed messages and a game of push and pull (in the form of awkward hugs, fervent sleazy kisses, avoiding him, and at the end literally walking out in a middle of conversation).

The actor playing classmate Fujimoto, is out of place with how his acting is far better than all the characters combined.

In a nutshell, the movie was uncomfortable to watch. The overall vibe felt like a BL from 2000s Japan: undercooked and overly dramatized, but with really neat cinematography. If the ending was tweaked a bit and the couple did not end up together, making it a learning slope for Yoichi (such is life), then at least the whole situationship would not be painted rosy.

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