Memories Of Tomorrow

Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s 2006 tearjerker concerns a successful advertising salesman pushing 50 (Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe) who discovers he has Alzheimer’s around the same time his only daughter is about to get married. Despite Watanabe’s skill in conveying this character’s growing desperation, he has to compete with such a hectoring, melodramatic score and so much directorial nudging that I emotionally checked out of this at the end of the first half hourafter which the film still had another hour and a half of solid grief to go. Some nuances persist, but they tend to get smothered. In Japanese with subtitles. 122 min. (JR)

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