Dog in A Sidecar (Saido ka ni inu) (NR)

synopsis

Kaoru, unhappy in her personal life and job as a real estate agent, flashes back to the summer she was 10 years old, when her flighty father (Furuta) quit his job to become a used car dealer (with some help from the yakuza), her straight-laced mother walked out, and her father’s free-spirited mistress Yoko (Takeuchi, in an award-winning turn) showed up at the door. Kaoru, as by-the-books as her mother, is reluctant to embrace Yoko’s unconventional and rebellious perspective, but as the two bond over shared adventures, she realizes they have more in common than she expected.