The Brooklyn Rail

When the Japanese studio system finally broke down in the nineties and home video fundamentally changed the landscape, visionaries like Hayao Miyazaki, Takashi Miike, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa made waves across the globe. Another of that era’s cinematic trendsetters, Shunji Iwai, will grace Metrograph with a retrospective of his work to mark the new 4K restoration of his debut feature, Love Letter (1995), an exquisitely tender exploration of love, memory, and grief, which will screen at Metrograph from June 5 through June 12.

This award-winning debut is a testament to Iwai’s distinct visual flair as a self-described “eizo sakka” or all-around visual artist. His is an intuitively polymathic approach—he wrote, directed, and edited this film, adapted it into a manga and a novel, and would eventually score several of his subsequent films as well. Love Letters is the first collaboration between Iwai and his longtime cinematographer, Noboru Shinoda (Picnic, All About Lily Chou-Chou), and the pair deploy ultra-wide frames of handheld scope to capture the picturesque, snowy vistas of Hokkaidō as a lush backdrop for unorthodox, ghostly romance.

One of the most striking elements of the film is J-pop idol Miho Nakayama’s performance in dual starring roles. First is Hiroko, a young widow whose grief at the death of her fiancé, Itsuki, lingers. Still trying to find connections and understand her deceased spouse, she sends a letter to his childhood address on a whim and is astonished to receive a response from another Itsuki (also played by Nakayama), who just so happens to be her fiancé’s former classmate. So begins a strange back and forth: Hiroko eagerly asks for details about her lost love, and Itsuki takes an unexpected walk down memory lane. As their exchanges deepen, the two mirrored women must come to terms with the fundamental multifacetedness and unknowability of even those they love the most.

In an interview for A Rabbit’s Foot, Iwai emphasized the resonance of Nakayama’s casting, suggesting that the star already held aspects of both characters. He saw how her disparate public and private selves as an idol and actress emulated qualities of both Itsuki and Hiroko: “She had previously played a lot of comical roles,” he explained, “so I knew she would be perfect for the spirited Itsuki—when I met her, I discovered that she wasn’t, as her screen persona would suggest, always an energetic character, but a very private, quiet girl,” much like Hiroko, whose desire to stay in the past keeps her cut off from her emotions in the present. Even with a new devoted lover eager to ask for her hand, Hiroko finds herself engaged to the specter of her lost Itsuki.

“Women are always tough,” mused Iwai in a 2001 interview with Subway Cinema, and that feminine resilience shines at the heart of Love Letter. As Hiroko laments after revealing to her penpal that the man who shares his name has passed away, “People are so easily forgotten when they die”—a fate she dreads. This staunch commitment to her lover’s memory keeps her stuck in the past, her longing echoed in Shinoda’s sweeping camera movements and soft lighting design. As Hiroko relives her formative years on paper, details once obscured by adolescence take on new meaning in adulthood. This yearning quality is this tremendously moving film’s greatest strength, a humanity that makes Love Letter resonate decades later.

Iwai’s unique voice has remained an enduring influence on Japanese filmmaking, and his universalist works have only become more accessible to international audiences with time. The raw tenderness of his debut studio heartwrencher alongside his empathetic focus on strong female characters, all woven together through Iwai’s keen visual style, make Love Letter a treasure.