Between Two Lovers
このごにおよんで愛など
Storyline
The story so far; the ending is not written yet.
A picture-book author, three years married, has been secretly seeing her female editor; pressed to choose, she proposes that the three of them live together and have a child.
Uta Kojima, a picture-book author, has been married for three years to Morio, who works for an insurance company, is considerate, cooks well and is torn by an old-fashioned idea of family. When Morio suggests they have a child, Uta evades it. She has been secretly carrying on a relationship with her editor, Junna Kuramochi, a prickly, single-minded woman who is dissatisfied with Uta but will not give her up. One day Morio and Junna both demand that she choose. Instead, Uta says she has imagined something strange: the three of them living in this house, and having a child together.
Morio and Junna are thrown by the idea, and by her. Uta tells each of them plainly that she loves them, and they call her selfish, careless, sloppy and greedy, sounding almost pleased. Under one roof the three lean on each other, collide and test each other. Morio, the one who seems most ordinary, finds his idea of an ordinary family shaken; Junna, rather than coming between husband and wife, takes on the three of them as a reality of its own. What they are to each other begins to change, and at last Junna is found to be pregnant. Around them are Morio's colleague and his wife, Uta's friend Kon-chan and his partner, a lawyer whom Morio and Junna go to consult, and a woman who works at a women's clinic.
Starring
Masami Nagasawaas Uta Kojima
A picture-book author, free-spirited, selfish and hard to dislike, who wants to keep both her husband and her lover.
Tasuku Emotoas Morio Kojima
Uta's husband of three years, an insurance-company employee who is considerate, cooks and wants a child.
Shizuka Ishibashias Junna Kuramochi
Uta's editor and lover, prickly and devoted, who is dissatisfied with Uta but will not let her go.
Why it matters
Love triangles usually end with a choice. Between Two Lovers begins with one being demanded and a heroine who refuses to make it: Uta wants her husband and she wants Junna, and her answer is one household and a child for the three of them. The director, Nanako Hirose, who trained as an assistant to Hirokazu Kore-eda and Miwa Nishikawa, has said the film grew from the idea that there should be more kinds of family, and the script won two awards at the Busan festival's project market in 2023. The questions it raises are concrete: a marriage that wants a child, a love between two women kept secret inside it, and what the law makes of three adults raising one child. The credits list an LGBTQ and legal supervisor, and the story sends Morio and Junna to a lawyer.