Happily Ever After (Jigyaku no uta) (2007)

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Is bad love better than no love at all? A woman finds herself pondering that question in this dark comedy from filmmaker Yukihiko Tsutsumi. When she was a teenager, Yukie Morita (Miki Nakatani) was the sort of girl whom people tended to ignore, and her efforts to stand out among her fellow students… More Is bad love better than no love at all? A woman finds herself pondering that question in this dark comedy from filmmaker Yukihiko Tsutsumi. When she was a teenager, Yukie Morita (Miki Nakatani) was the sort of girl whom people tended to ignore, and her efforts to stand out among her fellow students invariably ended in failure. The one thing that made others take notice of Yukie didn't help her much -- her father attempted to rob a bank, but his scheme failed so miserably it earned him lasting local notoriety. Desperate to start over, Yukie left the coastal town where she was born and moved to Osaka, where she worked a series of unglamorous jobs. In her early thirties, Yukie waits tables at a diner, but she's head over heels in love with her live-in boyfriend, Isao Hayama (Hiroshi Abe). Yukie is so thrilled to have someone to love that she's willing to ignore the fact Isao drinks too much, throws away his money gambling, can't hold a job, and has a hair-trigger temper that results in broken furniture and upended dinner tables on a regular basis. But is she really as happy as she claims to be? ~ Mark Deming, Rovi