Dear Friends (2007 film)
| Dear Friends | |
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| Directed by | Kazuyuki Morosawa |
| Produced by | Toei Company |
| Written by | Yoshi |
| Starring |
Keiko Kitagawa Yuika Motokariya Masaya Kikawada Airi Toriyama Mao Sasaki Hatsune Matsushima Mantaro Koichi Naoko Otani Yoshiko Miyazaki Ren Osugi |
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Release date
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Running time
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115 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Dear Friends (ディアフレンズ?) is a 2007 drama film written by Yoshi and directed by Kazuyuki Morosawa. The film stars Keiko Kitagawa and Yuika Motokariya in its lead roles.
The tagline for the film is "Are friends necessary?" The theme song is also called "Dear Friends", which is performed by Soulhead.
It is adapted from the manga "Dear Friends" by YOSHI, and art by Watanabe Ayu.
Dear Friends follows a high-school student named Rina (played by Keiko Kitagawa) who believes that friends are not necessary and that they can only be used in times of need. Thus, she is unable to maintain a decent relationship with her friends and classmates. Her family's relationship is also lacking; her father does not care much about his family and her mother is over-protective.
Rina spends a lot of her time going to a club in Shibuya where Yousuke (played by Masaya Kikawada) is the disc jockey with her friends Hiroko (played by Airi Toriyama) and Emi (played by Hatsune Matsushima). (In the opening scene, Rina has "borrowed" Hiroko's boyfriend for sex, infuriating Hiroko.) Yousuke falls for Rina, but her attitude has a feral edge, and they neck but stop short of having sex.
After obtaining a large amount of money under false pretenses (i.e. claiming she is pregnant when she is not and forcing the guy [not Hiroko's boyfriend or Yousuke] to pay for the abortion) and spending it on a bottle of Dom Pérignon (which she sprays over everyone at the club), Rina collapses on the dance floor. She eventually discovers that she has cancer (non-Hodgkin lymphoma) and becomes hospitalized for an indefinite amount of time. In the hospital, she is not visited by her family, but by one of her classmates named Maki (played by Yuika Motokariya). Although Maki tells Rina that they were friends in primary school, Rina does not remember her, so Maki takes the opportunity to re-connect with her. A young girl, Kanae, (played by Mao Sasaki) who is also hospitalized tries to become friends with Rina, but she holds fast onto her mantra of friends being unnecessary.
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