Hana & Alice

Hana and Alice

“Fortunately, Hana and Alice are still reconciled as before, struggling with melancholy and regret; probably it’s youth.”

Directed by Produced by Screenplay by Starring

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Shunji Iwai Shunji Iwai Shunji Iwai Anne Suzuki Yū Aoi Tomohiro Kaku Shunji Iwai Noboru Shinoda

Rockwell Eyes Toho March 13, 2004 135 minutes Japan

PLOT

When Alice develops a crush on a stranger at the train station, she offers her best friend, Hana, the stranger’s “half brother,” Masashi. Hana declines, but after watching Masashi from a distance, she develops feelings for him. She stalks him by traveling on his regular train throughout the winter.

During the spring, Hana and Alice enroll at Masashi’s high school. Hana learns that Masashi is a member of the story-telling club, which prompts her to join as a member. As she continues to track him secretly, she witnesses him crash into a garage door, which leaves him unconscious. As he awakes, he finds Hana leaning over him. She reveals that a blow to Masashi’s head has given him a case of amnesia and that she is his girlfriend. Hana and Masashi soon hang out as a couple while she continues deceiving him about their relationship. Alice becomes involved with Hana’s lies by pretending she is Masashi’s ex-girlfriend.

Through a series of events, a love triangle unexpectedly develops between Hana, Alice and Masashi when Masashi falls in love with Alice who he still believes is his ex. Masashi eventually learns Hana’s lie about his amnesia and reacts accordingly, which tests Hana and Alice’s friendship and their relationships with people around them.

Anne Suzuki - Hana Arai Yū Aoi - Tetsuko “Alice” Arisugawa Tomohiro Kaku - Masashi “Mr. Miya” Miyamoto Shoko Aida - Kayo Arisugawa (Alice’s mother) Hiroshi Abe - Boyfriend of Alice’s mother Sei Hiraizumi - Kenji Kuroyanagi (Alice’s father) Takao Osawa - Ryo Taguchi (Fashion Photographer)

Hana and Alice is a 2004 Japanese teen romance film by director Shunji Iwai. The film, shot on HD digital video by the director of photography, Noboru Shinoda, who shared a longstanding working relationship with Shunji Iwai, concerns the life of two girls, the titular Hana (Anne Suzuki) and Alice (Yū Aoi), and the stress placed on their friendship as they move into high school.

Originally shot as a series of short films for the 30th anniversary of Kit Kat in Japan,it was later expanded into a feature film by Iwai and received theatrical release in Japan in 2004. It moved into theaters in other Asian territories later in 2004 and 2005, and into western film festivals, such as New York Asian Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival.