Shindo (Japanese Movie)

Description: The story, based on a manga by Akira Saso, is more of a stretch, though it supplies unusual twists on its classical-musician-makes-good plot line. First, of all, Uta has no intention of making good. A prodigy who could read music before she could talk, she has been in a funk since the disappearance of her pianist father, who left on a foreign concert tour and never returned. Her mother (Satomi Tezuka) frets as she blows off her lessons, but the only piano Uta really wants to play is her father's, left in the house they were forced to abandon, for financial reasons, after his disappearance. She strikes up an age-inappropriate friendship with Wao (Kenichi Matsuyama, again), the 19-year-old son of a couple who run a vegetable shop. He wants desperately to enter an arts university and study piano, but he is less a player than a banger. Uta mocks his clumsiness, but likes his passion and becomes his unofficial coach and cheerleader.