A Bride for Rip Van Winkle

Director Iwai Shunji (All About Lily Chou-Chou, Hana and Alice) returns to SIFF with what could be his magnum opus, A Bride for Rip Van Winkle. Nanami is a struggling high-school teacher engaged to a man she met through social media. With the wedding fast approaching, and with no relatives except for her divorced parents, she needs to find guests to fill out the bride's side of the family. Enter Amuro, a jack-of-all-trades who arranges to hire actors to play her family members at the wedding. Once married, Nanami gives up teaching and settles into the role of a housewife. Her contented life is upended when Amuro reappears and tells her that he knows her husband is having an affair. With the sudden disintegration of her marriage, Nanami finds herself single again, and in dire need of money. Once again Amuro is there to help her with a job offer as a housekeeper at a beautiful mansion. The place is mostly empty, except for fellow housekeeper Mashiro - and a variety of poisonous sea creatures lurking in large tanks around the premises - and as time passes the pair's relationship evolves in an unexpected direction. A Bride for Rip Van Winkle is a beautiful, deceptively complex and multilayered film, as touching as it is funny. (Seattle International Film Festival)