Maybe it’s lost something in translation but this emotionally overwrought Japanese musical, based on a popular manga series by Naoshi Arakawa, strikes me as absurd. A tragic love story between two high school music prodigies, it’s glib, mawkish and riddled with clichés.
Even the set is a trite collage of Japanese screens, cherry blossom and a wooden bridge, centred around a rotating grand piano, the lid of which opens in moments of high drama like a gaping Muppet mouth of doom.
