How much do any of us really know about who we are? This question haunts director Kei Ishikawa’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982).
The complex story follows “unreliable narrator” Etsuko from Japan to England. A Pale View of Hills starts in 1982, as Etsuko (Yoh Yoshida) packs up her English country house, preparing to move. Her daughter Niki (Camilla Aiko) arrives, taking advantage of the domestic upheaval to ask about their family history.
Both are struggling with the suicide of older daughter Keiko. Niki cannot enter Keiko’s old room, while Etsuko tells neighbours that Keiko is living in Manchester, England. Niki expresses surprise at how easily her mother tells this lie, but as the film progresses we learn that mother and daughter are keeping a number of secrets from one another.
