Desert of Namibia
ナミビアの砂漠
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A 21-year-old drifts between two boyfriends and her own restlessness — Cannes-awarded portrait of a woman who won't be explained.
Kana is twenty-one, works at a hair-removal salon in Tokyo and finds almost everything boring. She lives with Honda, a gentle boyfriend in the property business who pays the rent, cooks for her and never complains, and she is secretly seeing Hayashi, a self-assured creator who still lives with his parents. When her friend Ichika tells her a former classmate has taken her own life, Kana barely listens.
While Honda packs for a business trip, she slips out to Hayashi, claiming Ichika has called in tears. Hayashi asks her to leave Honda, and she agrees. Back from the trip, Honda confesses that his boss took him to the kind of club he had sworn to refuse. Kana moves in with Hayashi.
Among his things she finds an ultrasound photograph and suspects he once made a woman pregnant and she had an abortion. She says nothing. On a camping trip with his parents and friends she feels out of place. At home they fight constantly. One night, kept waiting for dinner while he works, she throws things at him, storms out, falls down a flight of stairs and is badly hurt. Hayashi nurses her. Back at work, she finds Honda waiting; when he begs her to come home, she tells him, falsely, that she had an abortion while he was away, and laughs when he breaks down.
She walks out of her job. Finding Hayashi writing a screenplay about a jobless man who raises a baby, she confronts him with the photograph and demands he call the woman and apologise. He says it is none of her business, and the argument becomes a fight. An online psychiatrist suggests bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder and sends her to a cheaper clinic. There she tells a counsellor about a father who did things she cannot forgive, yet feels she must. The only calm comes one night in the woods, drinking and leaping over a fire with Hikari, the young woman next door.
At the end, after another fight, Kana and Hayashi sit down to eat. Her relatives in China call by video, and Kana, who barely speaks Chinese, keeps repeating the phrase for "I don't understand". Afterwards Hayashi asks what it means, says it himself, and they both laugh. Nothing is resolved.
Starring
Yuumi Kawaias Kana
A 21-year-old salon worker, bored and volatile, who leaves a gentle boyfriend for a more exciting one and cannot settle with either.
Kana’s story
Kana lets almost everything pass her by, even the kindness of Honda, who keeps house for her. She lies to him to spend nights with Hayashi and, when Hayashi asks, agrees to leave, marking the change with a nose piercing. Living with Hayashi, she finds an ultrasound photograph among his things and says nothing. The fights begin; after one she falls down a flight of stairs, and he nurses her. When Honda begs her to come back, she tells him, falsely, that she had an abortion, and laughs as he breaks down. Out of work, she confronts Hayashi with the photograph and attacks him, and asks an online doctor for a diagnosis because, she says, she wants to understand herself. At the end, after one more fight, she laughs with Hayashi over the Chinese for 'I don't understand'.
Daichi Kanekoas Hayashi
A self-assured young creator who asks Kana to leave Honda for him, then lives with her in a round of fights.
Hayashi’s story
Hayashi still lives with his parents when he asks Kana to leave her boyfriend for him. When she agrees, they go to a tattoo parlour: a nose piercing for her, a dolphin she drew inked on his arm. At home he works and keeps putting off dinner, and the fights begin. When she falls down the stairs after one, he apologises for rushing things and nurses her. Finding him writing a screenplay about a jobless man raising a baby, she confronts him with an old ultrasound photograph; he says he had forgotten it, that the pregnancy ended in an abortion he did not force, and that it is none of her business. He flees the fight that follows, yet they stay together. At the last meal he asks what her Chinese phrase means, repeats it, and they laugh.
Kanichiroas Honda
Kana's dutiful boyfriend in the property business, who pays the rent, cooks for her and cannot let her go.
Yuzumi Shintanias Ichika
Kana's friend, shaken by a former classmate's death, whose name Kana borrows as an alibi.
Erika Karataas Hikari Toyama
The mysterious young woman next door, who studies English aloud and shares a fire with Kana one night.
Why it matters
Desert of Namibia is a portrait of a young woman who will not be made likeable. Kana lies, sulks, laughs at a man in tears and hits the man she lives with, and the film declines to turn her into a lesson or a case. It sets side by side things usually discussed apart: the quiet control that can sit inside a kind boyfriend's care, the ease with which a man forgets a pregnancy he caused, a diagnosis offered over a video call as if a name could settle a person, and the weariness of someone with no wish to build the life everyone expects of her. At Cannes in 2024 it won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Directors' Fortnight, and Yoko Yamanaka, then 27, became the youngest woman to receive it. It asks for patience with a person who cannot explain herself, and shows how strong the wish is to explain her anyway.