Tremble All You Want

24-year-old Yoshika (Mayu Matsuoka, SHOPLIFTERS) works in the accounting department of a large corporation. Socially awkward and somewhat of an outcast, she enjoys conversations with random strangers and civil servants, staying up late to look up extinct animals on Wikipedia, and daydreaming about “Ichi” (the “One”) – a high school classmate who remains to this day, her one and only love. That is, until “Ni” (“Two”), a clumsy colleague, bursts her fabulous bubble.

Adapted from Risa Wataya’s beloved novel, and winner of the Audience Award at the 2017 Tokyo International Film Festival, Akiko Ohku’s TREMBLE ALL YOU WANT is a magnificent subversion of the romantic comedy. Ohku – one of Japan’s foremost directors working in the genre – crafts a remarkable character-driven film, unafraid to blend comedy and tragedy (and dash of the musical!) to best explore issues of mental health as pertaining to the heart; playing skillfully and poignantly with notions of loneliness, bias, perspective, mood, and the occasional, self-damaging delusion.