Movies by Mariko Kaga

Hana Yori Dango: Final

Hana Yori Dango: Final

Four years have passed since that emotional marriage proposal at Tsukushi Makino's high-school prom, and Tsukasa Dōmyōji announced his engagement to Tsukushi to the entire world. At an engagement dinner between their families, Dōmyōji's mother, who has been strongly against their relationship before, presents Tsukushi a tiara, which is estimated to be worth roughly 10 billion yen, as a token of their engagement. But that night, the tiara is stolen by somebody! Then, Dōmyōji and Tsukushi travel around the globe to Las Vegas, Hong Kong, and ev...

Love Letter

Love Letter

Yuko is in love with an old poet who happens to be also a married man. She waits patiently for him and only him, yet she is constantly being lust by others.

Daughter of Time

Daughter of Time

A member of the jieitai ("Self-Defense Force"; i.e. Japanese military) is on leave and finds a woman giving birth in a graveyard in the former Yoshiwara district. He takes her to an inn to gove birth, and stays on a few days as she recovers, but becomes fascinated with the strange people he meets there, particularly the owner, who visits a house in his courtyard every day to talk and give food to his mother. He says she is very sick and can't leave bed, but no one else has ever been inside or seen her.

Kagero-za

Kagero-za

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.

Pleasures of the Flesh

Pleasures of the Flesh

A corrupt businessman blackmails the lovelorn reprobate Atsushi into watching over his suitcase full of embezzled cash while he serves a jail sentence.

Twinkle

Twinkle

Shoko and Mutsuki get married to satisfy their worried parents, but she is well past the age at which a 'good' Japanese woman should marry, and he is in love with a young male college student. The film is less a realistic exploration of gay life than a fairy tale of three young Japanese trying to construct an alternative to the sexual and familial roles given to them by a society turning increasingly emotionally barren.

Paper Lantern

Paper Lantern

A new wave Yakuza film in which Takanori Jinnai plays a young Yakuza suffering from stomach cancer who has very little left to live. This film is based on the posthumous manuscript of Shoji Kaneko, the legendary director who died of cancer after completing work on the hit "Ryuji".