(Ab)normal Desire
正欲
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
People whose desire is aimed at water, not humans, form a covert alliance — a novel about the limits of 'diversity'.
Natsuki Kiryu works in a shopping mall in the provincial town where she grew up and goes home each night to videos of running water, the only thing that arouses her. She has never told anyone. In Yokohama, the prosecutor Hiroki Terai is fighting with his wife, Yumi, over their son, who has stopped going to school and wants to post videos online. Terai believes there is a normal way to live. At a university nearby, Yaeko Kanbe, who is frightened of men, is organising a diversity festival, and finds that Daiya Morohashi, a dancer, is the one man whose touch she can bear.
At a classmate's wedding Natsuki learns that Yoshimichi Sasaki has come home. At school they once met, drenched, in the spray of an old tap, and understood each other without a word. Seeing him living normally, dating, she is furious. On New Year's Eve she sets out to end her life, and turns back when she meets Yoshimichi, who had also meant to die that night. He proposes they join forces to survive in this world, as a married couple with no romance in it. They move to Yokohama and, for the first time, feel safe.
Terai's son's channel is shut down as suspected indecent material after he films balloon-popping and water play at viewers' requests. Yumi leaves Terai. Online, Yoshimichi finds a commenter using the name of a man once arrested for leaving taps running: Daiya. With a third man, Yatabe, they film themselves playing with water in a park, and children join in. Yatabe preys on children. When he is arrested for sexually exploiting a boy, his footage leads the police to Yoshimichi and Daiya.
Terai, handling the case, does not believe the two men's claim that they care only about water. He interviews Natsuki and recognises her as a woman he once helped in a shopping street. Asked whether the couple have special feelings about water, she asks whether he has ever had the thing he lived for dismissed as impossible; whether he believes it or not, she says, people like this exist. Told he cannot pass on messages, she asks anyway: tell her husband she is not going anywhere. The words stay with him.
Starring
Goro Inagakias Hiroki Terai
A Yokohama prosecutor who treats whatever he cannot understand as abnormal, at odds with his wife over their son.
Hiroki Terai’s story
Terai believes a life has a proper shape. When a colleague suggests that a man arrested for leaving taps running was aroused by water, he says no such person exists. He tolerates the videos his son, who will not go to school, posts with his mother's help; when the channel is shut down, he blames Yumi and calls people he cannot understand society's bugs, and she leaves him, taking their son. Then he is given the case of three men arrested after one of them was found preying on children. Two insist they care only about water, and he does not believe them. The wife of one is Natsuki, a woman he once helped in a shopping street. She asks whether he has ever had what he lived for dismissed as impossible. After she leaves, he sits thinking.
Yui Aragakias Natsuki Kiryu
A shopping-mall worker in her home town who has hidden all her life that her desire is for water, not people.
Natsuki Kiryu’s story
Natsuki lives with her parents and keeps her one secret. When she hears that Yoshimichi, the only person who shares it, is back in town, she hopes to see him; seeing him on a date, she throws a stone through his window. On New Year's Eve she sets out to end her life and meets Yoshimichi, who meant to do the same. They talk, and neither goes through with it. People like them, she says, are like foreign students on Earth. Months later she accepts his proposal of a marriage without love; in Yokohama they try, fully clothed, to imitate sex and find only that they like being held. When he is arrested, she tells the prosecutor that people like them exist whether he believes it or not, and asks him to tell her husband she is not going anywhere.
Hayato Isomuraas Yoshimichi Sasaki
Natsuki's former classmate, who shares her secret and proposes a marriage that will let them both survive.
Yoshimichi Sasaki’s story
Yoshimichi comes back to his home town after his parents die in an accident, and later admits he was relieved they died before they could learn what he is. On New Year's Eve, meaning to die, he meets Natsuki instead. Months later he gives her a ring and asks her to join forces with him to survive in this world. Hoping no one like them is suffering alone, he contacts a commenter who turns out to be Daiya, and with a third man they film themselves playing with water in a park, where children join in. The third man preys on children, and Yoshimichi is arrested too. He asks the prosecutor whether it is a crime that he had never shared this feeling with anyone. In custody, he is the one Natsuki's message is for: she is not going anywhere.
Kanta Satoas Daiya Morohashi
A university student and dancer who shares the same desire and searches online for others like him.
Daiya Morohashi’s story
Daiya keeps people at a distance and dances as if venting anger. Online he comments on water videos under the name of a man once arrested for leaving taps running, hoping someone like him will answer. When Yaeko turns up at his part-time job, he sends her away. When he tries to dodge a seminar retreat she has roped him into, she tells him she is afraid of men, that his touch is the one she can bear, and that she wants to understand him. Wary at first, he says he may finally have found people like himself. He skips the retreat to film water play in a park with Yoshimichi and a third man, who is then arrested for preying on children; Daiya is arrested too, and the prosecutor will not believe he cares only about water.
Ayaka Higashinoas Yaeko Kanbe
A student organising a diversity festival, afraid of men, for whom Daiya is the one man whose touch she can bear.
Why it matters
(Ab)normal Desire puts a hard question to the language of diversity: what becomes of people whose desire has no place on the list? Natsuki and Yoshimichi are drawn to water, not to people, and the film treats that as a way of being to be lived with, not a joke or a symptom. Around them it sets a prosecutor who calls whatever he cannot understand abnormal, and a campus festival that celebrates diversity without imagining them. The film does not pretend the line is always easy to see: one of the men filming water play in the park is a predator, and the other two are arrested with him. What it shows plainly is the cost of isolation: two people who had each planned to die, kept alive by a marriage whose only promise is that neither will leave. It was selected for the main competition of the 2023 Tokyo International Film Festival.