How Old Is the River?

Three half-brothers (their father was a serial husband) share an old-style house by a river outside Tokyo; but the house is on the market, and they have a week to vacate it. The youngest boy has a very secret crush on the eldest, and the other two are rivals for their female cousin; it doesn't take much to shatter their precarious emotional equilibrium. Making her first feature, Kazama sets out to pinpoint the exact moment when young adults surrender their adolescent sense of independence and begin to face a future in society. The film is sometimes so low-key that it threatens to float off down-river itself, but it sketches its characters with unassertive skill.