Director: Ogigami Naoko

Released in 2012

Sayoko (Ichikawa Mikako) is a bit of a manic pixie dream girl, but thankfully, there is no tight-arsed male whose world she has to upend or soul she has to save in her adorably quirky way. She does hope for a man though. She wishes to marry and honeymoon in Hawaii, but her loneliness doesn’t take the film down the rom-com route that I expected it to. Instead, what we get is an exploration of the various ways people can feel alone and isolated. Is the cure a cat? Sayoko’s many cats help to plug the hole of loneliness in her life and the lives of those who rent them. But, as the film shows, a cat isn’t a miracle cure, but then again, neither is a man or a dream vacation.