Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Love Like the Falling Petals’ on Netflix, a Japanese Romance That Goes From Delightful to Frightful

Netflix J-romance Love Like the Falling Petals wants you to cry. Cry cry cry. And then cry some more. It’s a Tokyo-set smoochy/sad saga starring Kento Nakajima (of Japanese boy band Sexy Zone!) and Honoko Matsumoto as totes-adorbs 20-somethings gone gaga over each other, until fate saddles them with a debilitating setback. So it’s not a matter of if you need some Kleenex, people. It’s how many boxes you’ll blow through.

LOVE LIKE THE FALLING PETALS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: He was lured in by a coupon, and he found himself in love. The promise of a discounted haircut brought young Haruto (Nakajima) and his ca. 2011 moody and perma-tousled mop of boy-band hair to the stylist’s chair of Misaki (Matsumoto). She snips away as they hit it off not in a rom-com clever-one-liner kind of way, but a rom-dram bashful-muttering kind of way. He tells her how he’s a wannabe photographer who wants to shoot the gorgeous cherry blossoms that litter the sky and ground with fluttery white petals and are only in bloom for a brief time and therefore are symbolic and metaphorical for things and that she should join him when she accidentally almost cuts off his earlobe. Well, now she HAS to go with him, as “just compensation for the damages,” he reasons, a comically huge bandage wrapped around his head like a triple-sized 1970s NBA headband. She agrees.

That momentous day will be replayed in Haruto and Misaki’s minds many many times. He’s a bit of a brooding artist and she’s a gleeful, youthful sort, seemingly younger than her still-pretty-young 25 years, and, let’s face it, they’re f—ing kewwt together. She loves being a hairdresser because she sees it as using “magic” on people so they can “feel cute.” He’s been working crap jobs since quitting a difficult gig as assistant to an assistant to a famous photographer, and she chews him out about that in a slightly aggressive but still utterly adorable manner. How can he follow his dream if he’s toiling away swabbing spittle from microphones at a karaoke bar? He’s shocked and inspired. How could he not be shaggy-haired-head-over-heels smitten?

Cue the montage of goofy-fun dates – talking through mouthfuls from spoonfuls from platefuls of rice during dinner out, playful hand-in-hand gambols through the street, Misaki’s inability to stay awake at the movies, etc. Haruto’s back working at the photo studio and he confesses his love to her and it makes her giddy and it’s all bliss bliss bliss. One day she isn’t feeling well, and Haruto comes to visit and there’s a big to-do about Miyaki not wanting him to see her without makeup, even though she looks pretty much perfect anyway. She lives with her overprotective big brother (Kento Nagayama) and his fiancee (Yuki Sakurai) above his restaurant; their parents passed away. Misaki doesn’t get better, though. She falls on the floor in pain and finds herself subjected to a battery of tests – and diagnosed with progeroid syndrome, a genetic disorder that will cause her to age at 10 times the normal rate. In a year, her body will be elderly, and then… well. You know. Will she tell Haruto what’s up? Or will she push him away and make him remember her only as her perky, youthful, affirming, vivacious 25-year-old self? IF ONLY IT WERE SO SIMPLE.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Love Like the Falling Petals brings to mind Komi Can’t Communicate, a hyperbolic anime young-love story, except it’s more hyperbolic and less anime.

Performance Worth Watching: Before she gets covered with babushkas and old-person makeup, Matsumoto is an Amelie-esque presence who lights up scenes with spirited pep.

Memorable Dialogue: The monumental weight of the following promise Haruto makes to Misaki is only matched by its specificity to this story: “I swear on my earlobe.”

Sex and Skin: Misaki and Haruto find themselves in the sexy zone (note lack of capitalization) once, but it’s light PG-13 stuff.

Our Take: This is a tale of two movies: The first hour or so of Falling Petals is a charming and disarming, lightly comedic, tonally on-point romance between two semi-timid souls, and the second hour is a draggy, mega-melodramatic wallow in snot, grief and confusion. Character development grinds to a halt and the narrative gets wobbly and episodic – Haruto goes camping with a female co-worker, Misaki’s brother takes her to get alternative treatments out of desperation, etc. – on its way to a dragged-out conclusion. As you’d surely expect, it features moments of intense grief, but they’re less heart-rending and more, well, howler monkey.

So when we’re not stifling unintentional laughter (or just giving up and letting it rip) we’re left gasping for the energy Matsumoto injected into the first half, and forced to ponder the film’s heavy-handed thematic blurghh: The brevity of cherry blooms in the cycle of life, how photographers capture fleeting moments for posterity, etc. It’s all right there for you to chew and swallow, a shallow buffet of obviousness likely assembled to please teen audiences while the rest of us yawn and thumb through magazines. The second half of the movie made me despair for all the wrong reasons – not for the fate of its characters, but how it managed to transform from cheery delight to dreary slog.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Love Like the Falling Petals is buoyant, and then it’s blehh. Even the accidental comedy can’t make up for the bad taste it leaves in your mouth.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.