2 Duo

A low-budget first feature with an exemplary grasp of what it's doing (and why it was worth doing in the first place), this account of a young couple falling apart together has real bite. The guy is an aspiring actor, the girl works in a smart boutique; her sense that things are going really really wrong starts when he turns a trivial apology into a proposal of marriage. Suwa began with a full script but told his actors to forget it and invent their own actions, reactions and dialogue. He shoots the results in long takes from fixed angles, and compounds the quasi-documentary feel by adding sequences in which the characters respond to questions about themselves from an off-screen interviewer. The resulting feeling of truthfulness makes it all remarkably moving.