That must have been the most overrated, over hyped, unjustifiably long and pretentious film I've ever seen. I don't know and I can't even imagine why this film got so many awards.
For me at least was an unsuccessful attempt to convey with some beautiful cinematography and pretentious moody acting some very questionable ideas.

BE AWARE SPOILERS AHEAD




Fukaku Yusuke a stage actor and director, who is repeatedly cheated by his wife Oto , feels cheated. ( how original!!)
The messed up by the death of their child wife Oto, cheats on him and has sex with her lovers even in their own home . Having sex with her husband and other men is a very inspiring process for her though, because it makes her create stories that made her a famous screenwriter. Fukaku Yusuke's wife dies at some point from natural causes and he feels, - on top of being cheated- guilty because he wasn't able to save her.

Two years later, Misaki becomes Yusuke's driver for the duration of his stay at Hiroshima, where he is assigned to direct a stage play, ( Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov), In the process we learn that she feels anger and hate for her psycho mother who brutally abused her when she was a child. Her mother dies in a natural disaster accident and Misaki feels guilty too because she didn't want and probably wasn't able to save her.

Takatsuki Koshi a young idol actor and one of Yusuke's wife's lovers is cast to play Uncle Vanya in the stage play that Yusuke is directing, a multilingual adaptation of this stage play where all the actors and the actresses of the cast speak a different language. Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and even sign language ( I don't know what could have been the purpose of such an adaptation. If the concept after all was to make the audience of the play read over titles then it should have been a more valid option to play Uncle Vanya in Russian!!).
Takatsuki's career is messed up too after being caught up to have an affair with a minor.
During the rehearsals of the play, assaults a guy who photographed him without his consent and afterwards he is lecturing Yusuke about how truthful in her ideal was his wife, how much she loved her husband ( !!) and how inspirational and deep was for her to f@ck with other men (including himself of course!) The guy he assaulted dies after a while at the hospital.


And then we get to the point ( at last). And the point is that Yusuke shouldn't feel angry and he shouldn't feel wronged because his wife was after all true to herself, ( even though she wasn't true to him) that Misaki shouldn't feel this way about her mother, because her mother was also true to herself (even though she had a multiple personality disorder !).

But the same absolution doesn't apply in the case of Takatsuki who ends up being arrested even though he was probably equally true to himself and his intentions when he assaulted and eventually killed the guy who took the photo.

And that's what the movie is all about. Almost three hours of beautifully filmed but completely pretentiously acted attempt to persuade us that everything is fine as long as we take other people's shit as they are, hoping perhaps that things will get better in the ... afterlife... ( ??) ha ha haaa

4 out of 10 from me just for the sake of the cinematography.
The plot sucks and it's intentions are at least questionable.