Mitsuko Ishii

A man and a woman committed double suicide in Kanazawa City. Immediately after the incident, Yoshiko Shiota, a woman living in Tokyo, contacts the local newspaper of Kanazawa, saying she wants to read the novel serialized in it by Ryuji Sugimoto. How did this woman know the novel is serialized in the newspaper? And why does she want to start reading it in the middle of the story? Which article was she actually interested in? Sugimoto cannot help making his own investigations about Yoshiko, but the more he searches, the more astonishing facts come to light...

A man’s body is found in the suburbs of Tokyo. The dead man was hit by a car and his head beaten by the reckless driver after the accident. The dead man had a wife named Noriko. She likes fancy things and she has a lover named Tsukada. It's also learned that the dead man was insured for 300 million yen. The media and the public look at Noriko and her boyfriend Tsukada with suspicion, but they have perfect alibis. Then, Detective Hibiki, who is in charge of the case, and Private Detective Kono become involved in a series of mysterious murder cases.

A thug offers to pay a law student's gambling debt if the student will accompany him on a trip across Tokyo.

'Female' is comprised of five short films adapted from five novels by female authors. Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, Tetsuo Shinohara, Ryuichi Hiroki, Miwa Nishikawa, and Suzuki Matsuo.

Widowed young, Masuda Etsuko runs a small-town garage/gas-station on her own. Nervous bank robber Sawada (he keeps throwing up when stressed) enters her life pretending to be a customer, and takes the meagre contents of her till at knifepoint. But his getaway is thwarted by the appearance of a cop on the forecourt, so he hides in her backroom and ties her up overnight. This turns out to be the start of a bizarre "odd couple" relationship, in which they alternate between attacking and wounding each other and dressing each other’s wounds. As advertised in the title, Etsuko’s emotional volatility (rooted in her possessiveness, which the script links with a passion for butterfly collecting) has a major bearing on the unexpected outcome.

Schoolgirl Kuniko is kidnapped by a middle-aged man Iwazono when she is jogging. He tells her that he had a failed marriage which leaves him a deep and everlasting scar in his mind. He kidnaps her in search of a perfect marriage and intends to lock her in the room and 'educate' her to perform perfect sex where body and soul are united.

Su-san resigns after getting fed up with corporate life, but he finds himself back in familiar surroundings on his first assignment at a new job.

One summer day, a group of sixth-grade boys have an argument about whether fireworks are round or flat when viewed from different angles and embark on a journey for the answer during the annual firework festival. Meanwhile, one of their classmates, Nazuna, is troubled by her parents' separation and decides to choose one of the boys to run away with.

Yuka came to work as an intern nurse at a hospital and she met Shunichi again. They were school friends, and she liked him. But, she found out that Shunichi had an osteosarcoma.

Set in the 1990s, this film uses black humour to cast a sharp, satirical eye at the problems facing modern Japanese families. Hiroshi accidentally hits a young woman with his car and flees in panic. He confesses to his wife, Yoko, who persuades him to keep quiet as his arrest would mean the end for their already troubled family. Their daughter is having an affair with a married man, their son is being bullied and refusing to go to school and their grandfather is becoming more difficult. Yoko urges the family to move the car into the living room in order to destroy the evidence by taking it apart. Hiroshi finally decides to do the honest thing but a series of bizarre incidents then ensues...

The film stars two of Itami's regular actors, Nobuko Miyamoto as a geisha who brings luck to the men with whom she sleeps, and Masahiko Tsugawa as her unfaithful, sometimes partner. As well as showing her relationships with the man she loves and the men who employ her, it satirizes corruption and the influence of money in Japanese politics.