Kaza-hana

Another turgid exercise in up-market soap from Somai, who enjoys an inexplicably high critical reputation in Japan. This one gives Kyoko 'Kyon-Kyon' Koizumi (20 years earlier Japan's top 'idol') her first adult role as a burnt-out hooker and bar hostess who heads home to Hokkaido to see her daughter, raised by her mother and stepfather. Her accidental companion on the trip is an alcoholic civil servant (Asano making yet another bad career choice), who has just been suspended from work for shoplifting while on a drunken binge. Both are clearly heading for early graves, but Somai piles on the agony with interminable driving sequences, tortured flashbacks and soap-style scenes of heartbreak. The ironic title refers to dancing snowflakes, held to be harbingers of spring.