One Million Yen Girl

Suzuko Sato is twenty-one when she leaves prison, and the gossip that greets her at home makes staying impossible. She hits on a plan: earn one million yen, move somewhere nobody knows her, and start again. She works at a seaside resort, then on a peach farm in the mountains, keeping her distance from the people she meets and leaving each time she reaches her target. In a Tokyo suburb she takes a job in a flower shop and grows close to Nakajima, a student working there part-time. Their attraction develops just as her savings near the sum that would send her away again, putting her rule against the possibility of staying.

Yuki Tanada wrote and directed the film, which was released in Japan in 2008 and runs 121 minutes. It is a drama produced by Japanese companies including Nikkatsu Corporation, dentsu, Pony Canyon and WOWOW. Yu Aoi plays Suzuko, with Ryusei Saito as Takuya Sato, Mirai Moriyama as Ryohei Nakajima, Pierre Taki as Haruo Fujii, Sumie Sasaki as Kinu Fujii and Keisuke Horibe as Kogure among a credited cast of twenty-eight. The film took about two million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from roughly 2,300 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 out of 10 from about 70 votes, indicating a modest theatrical reach but a consistently favourable response across both audiences.