April 1954. 12 year old schoolgirl Sadako thinks her main problem is being unable to pass the baton in relay races. But just as her team starts winning, she starts getting tired more easily. She is sent back to the American Base Victory Hospital, where the diagnosis is lymphatic leukemia. And she has no more than a year left to live. Her parents agree with the doctor that Sadako should not be told, but will she find out anyway ?
The film tells the story of a man who was washed ashore on an uninhabited island after a ship wrecked by a storm, and after twelve years, he returned to human society.
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older. She's of an age when she must choose: to seek marriage (difficult given her tarnished occupation), to be a kept woman, or to borrow money to buy a bar of her own. Each route has dangers, including investors demanding a return on their loans. Keiko has a quiet dignity that attracts men, but are they what they seem? Does she actually have choices?
The mythical adventures of the legendary Chinese trickster Monkey, who must outwit a variety of wily demons who stand in the way of him and his fellow Buddhist travelers. Though portrayed as a literal, if rather anthropomorphized, monkey in the original legends, this film substitutes the spindly comic actor Norihei Miki, sans makeup.
