Norwegian Wood

Toru Watanabe is a young man in 1960s Tokyo who loses his closest friend, Kizuki, to suicide. He leaves his home city for university, where he unexpectedly meets Naoko, Kizuki's former girlfriend. The two share the same loss and draw together over it, though they cope with their grief in very different ways and Naoko remains fragile and withdrawn. As their closeness deepens, she disappears from his life, leaving him to carry on while he is also drawn to Midori, a lively and outgoing young woman. Years later, hearing a Beatles song at an airport in Germany, Toru looks back on that period of his youth.

This Japanese drama is based on Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name and was released in 2010. It is directed by Tran Anh Hung, who also wrote the screenplay, and it stands between his earlier features The Scent of Green Papaya and Cyclo and his later The Taste of Things. Kenichi Matsuyama plays Toru, with Rinko Kikuchi as Naoko and Kiko Mizuhara as Midori. The film earned roughly 18 million dollars worldwide.

On IMDb the film holds 6.3 out of 10 from about 13,000 votes, and on TMDB it has 6.4 out of 10 from around 241 votes. It received a critics' rating of 6.6 out of 10 from 63 reviews, which is close to the audience scores.