“A Lotus Blossom. It’s the flower I like. Your name means the same thing, after all. This time, I want to see them bloom with you.” – quotes from Does the Flower Bloom?

I could not sleep early on a Saturday morning, and this movie’s review came up on YouTube feed out of nowhere. So, on a whim, I decided to watch it. Before you know it, I had finished it and had become so engrossed in its plot and story, I found myself caring about these characters with a certain sense of affection. I found myself teary eyed and gently weeping for them. It is an intensely gut-wrenching film that is deeper than it is given credit for.

I was shocked and dismayed at how poor the reviews were for this movie. I do not understand. I loved it. To be sure, it does not move mountains, but it is not meant to do so. It is a story about two misfit loners who happen to find each other at exactly the right moment in their lives in exactly the right space that connected them to a feeling of fruition. They found each other’s treasured one.

Kazuaki Sakurai (Yoichi Mizukawa) works for an advertising agency. He is a hard-working 37-year-old man with not much going for him and devotes most of his time to work or drinking/smoking. On a CM shoot at a location in a beautiful house, before leaving, he wants to thank the owner of the property and goes searching for him. He comes across a rather young, reclusive, handsome young man absorbed in painting. Kazuaki recognized it as a beautiful flower. Yoichi Mizukawa (Watanabe Tsurugi) is shocked and surprised as his piece is abstract and an expressionist piece; yet Kazuaki got it and understood it. Kazuaki is also struck with the young man’s artistic talent and his overall intensity. Almost immediately, Yoichi becomes enamored with Kazuaki thinking and finding ways to spend more time with him. And so, their journey to trying to understand what is happening between them begins.

Yoichi is a deeply introspective young man, being all of 19 years old. Living essentially alone except for some roommates and a caretaker, he remains isolated and feels either guilt or somehow responsible for the death of his parents. In either case, he lives in their shadow and deeply mourns their loss. Meanwhile, he awakens in Kazuaki a feeling long dead or perhaps it never really existed. And that is a connection, any connection, to another human being on any level other than superficiality. He is attracted to Yoichi, and it only intensifies. Of course, he uses the age gap between them to distance himself from Yoichi to try to convince himself it will not work. But that is not the underlying issue. He has been slated to transfer to Osaka soon and will be separated from him for a considerable period. Will it work?

There is a rather enigmatic character who waltzes into Yoichi’s life. His name is Fujimoto Hiroki (Shiono Akihisa). He goes to the same school and is an unquestionably handsome and straightforward young man who has admired Yoichi for quite some time. Soon he confesses his love for him. He tries very hard to convince Yoichi that with Kazuaki leaving and the age difference, he would be a better choice. And he is without question or reservation in love with him. Yoichi’s response to him borders on a matter-of-fact approach. While he knows all that to be true, his love is for Kazuaki, no one else and never will. Shiono Akihisa’s portrayal of his character is utterly fascinating. He is pushy, intense, and yet comes across with complete sincerity and vulnerability. When Yoichi spurns him, he is deeply wounded. It is then that we truly realize the extent to which his love for Yoichi really is felt. He covered it up with outward bravado behavior but deep-down, he was intensively in love with Yoichi.

This film is full of subtlety and unanswerable questions. Is this connection really strong enough to survive the time apart? Is their age difference so significant to affect their relationship? To be sure, these two are flawed individuals. Yoichi is astonishingly self-centered and thinks the world revolves around him while Kazuaki is essentially afraid of being gay. As he himself said, he would have asked Yoichi to go with him ‘if he were a girl’. Kazuaki is obviously tone-deaf and still reflects the societal pressures and norms of Japanese culture as conventional standards to adhere to.

Yet, at the end, the quote above is a reflection of where they will go and the symbolism of their relationship. Kazuaki has given Yoichi a lotus blossom to plant so when he returns, they can watch it grows together. In the last scene, we see Yoichi using much brighter colors to paint more recognizable images of flowers. And he is smiling, something he had never done before until he met Kazuaki.

Does the flower bloom? Perhaps it will.

Rating- 4.75 out of 5

Streaming on- YouTube