Radiance

Radiance is a Japanese drama about Misako Ozaki, a woman who writes audio descriptions of films for viewers who are blind or have low vision. She devotes herself to finding the right words for every colour, gesture and texture, though her early test screenings are criticised for being either too wordy or too sparse. At one such screening she meets Masaya Nakamori, a photographer whose sight is steadily failing. He is blunt in his judgement of her work, but the two are drawn to each other, and each struggles with an inner burden the other may help to ease.

The film was directed by Naomi Kawase, who also wrote the screenplay. It is the fifth of the seven features she directed in the stated chronological order, arriving between Sweet Bean and The Moon. Masatoshi Nagase plays Masaya and Ayame Misaki plays Misako; the cast also includes Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Shirakawa, Misuzu Kanno and Mantaro Koichi. It was produced by Masa Sawada and Yumiko Takebe, and is a French-Japanese co-production running 101 minutes.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.4 out of 10 from around 2,100 votes, and on TMDB it has a 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 113 votes. The two audience scores sit close together, suggesting a modest but consistent response from viewers.