Kazetachi no gogo

This beautifully bleak account of a Tokyo daycare worker's obsession with her roommate captures the bittersweet pain of unrequited love.

Natsuko's co-worker Etsuko asks her how she feels about men. "Not for me," she says, "I won't degrade myself." Based on an actual newspaper story, Afternoon Breezes presents Natsuko's repressed lesbianism as a crush which evolves into an obsession with her roommate Mitsu. With lots of real-time sequences and a remarkably complex use of sound the film has surprisingly little dialogue, conveying meaning through a wonderfully simple use of action and objects.

Definitely not a "positive" lesbian portrayal, and yet immensely pleasurable as a really well-made film and as an intense portrait of a desperate crush on a straight girl!