The first half hour of the film stays fairly close to the spirit and letter of the novel. There is a visual joke while Maria describes how, in spite of her name, she is unlike her namesake saint. Ichikawa films a giant cross, actually a large crosswalk in Tokyo. There are also many shots of the sea, looking out to the horizon. During the credit sequence, we see Tsugumi tormented by a little boy who loves hitting Tsugumi with a fly swatter. While the boy is peering at a small pile of garbage, Tsugumi kicks him face down into the trash. The character of the boy was not in the novel, yet that one moment better captures how I imagined Tsugumi as Yoshimoto describes her.

It is after that first half hour that Ichikawa strays from Yoshimoto's novel. Two of the bigger alterations involve Yoichi's age and occupation. In the novel, he is about Tsugumi's age, and the son of a developer who is building a large hotel that will likely put the smaller inns run by people like Tsugumi's parents out of business. In the film, Yoichi is more mature, and working at a museum. The other major change, without spoiling the plot, involves a elaborate plot conducted by Tsugumi as revenge for the death of a dog.

I might have enjoyed Ichikawa's film better also had it not been hobbled by some badly translated subtitles. As it is, this second feature by Ichikawa has much of the same formal beauty as Tony Takitani, perhaps not to be unexpected by the former director of four hundred television commercials. Ichikawa repeats certain shots in different contexts so that cherry blossoms seen in full bloom are later seen as bare trees in winter. There is a wonderful crane shot of the camera moving from Maria as she emerges from a movie theater with her mother that cranes up to the theater marquee and dissolves into a wide shot of Tokyo. Too often, Ichikawa's film goes against how I read Yoshimoto's novel, choosing to be serious and sentimental while the novel is playful and caustic.

Above is a frame from the film within the film that Maria and her mother watch in the beginning of Tsugumi. Based on the name of one of the characters in that film, and from what I could identify through the Internet Movie Database, I am thinking the excerpt in question is from Meshi, a film by Mikio Naruse, released in 1951. I am not absolutely certain, but I think I noticed Setsuko Hara in the cast. As I cannot read Kanji, maybe someone will identify what is written on the marquee.

In terms of Banana Yoshimoto and film, her debut novel, Kitchen was filmed twice. I have been hesitant about getting the second version, the only one with English subtitles, as it is several minutes shorter than the original release version. It may be worth noting that Yoshimoto has named Dario Argento as her favorite filmmaker, and Robert Aldrich's Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte as one of her favorite films.