Hana & Alice

Hana and Alice are inseparable high school friends who spend their days together, including watching the boys who ride the same train they do. Hana becomes fixated on Masashi, a quiet boy her own age who is usually seen trailing an older, foreign-looking companion. After Masashi walks into an obstacle while reading and is knocked unconscious, Hana is there when he comes to. She convinces him that he has lost his memory and that she is his girlfriend, and he believes her. Masashi's interest soon turns toward the girl he is told was his former girlfriend, Alice, who knows nothing about the story Hana has invented. The tangle of half-truths leaves the two friends struggling with what they have told him and with what each of them feels.

Shunji Iwai directed and wrote the film, which was produced by Koko Maeda and Iwai through Rockwell Eyes and released in Japan in 2004. It runs 135 minutes and mixes comedy, drama and romance. Anne Suzuki plays Hana and Yu Aoi plays Alice, with Kaku Tomohiro as Masashi, Shoko Aida, Hiroshi Abe and Sei Hiraizumi among the credited cast of 32. The film is the eighth of sixteen features Iwai has directed, arriving between Jam Films in 2002 and New York, I Love You in 2008.

On IMDb it holds a 7.2 rating from around 5,400 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7 from roughly 139 votes, indicating a small but appreciative audience for this story of friendship and mistaken identity.