Ichiko (Mariko Tsutsui) is a quiet, devoted home caregiver looking after an elderly woman in a family household with three generations. Unmarried and living alone in a Spartan apartment, Ichiko has all but become part of the family, even helping the woman's eldest granddaughter Motoko (Mikako Ichikawa) study to be a nurse. They all pull together when the youngest suddenly goes missing and share in the relief when, after a week, she is found, seemingly unharmed after being abducted. But when her abductor is arrested, it is Ichiko's nephew (Ren Sudo), who first set eyes on the girl through an inadvertent meeting with his aunt.
At Motoko's urging, Ichiko keeps the meeting secret from both the parents and the police but of course, the truth comes out and it unravels Ichiko's entire life: she loses her job, her fiancé, and her privacy as reporters hound her for scandalous details. A parallel storyline concerning Ichiko's relationship with a hairdresser named Yoneda (Sôsuke Ikematsu), set a couple of weeks after the abduction, is rather confusingly intercut with the kidnapping and aftermath, though it ultimately becomes inextricably wound into Ichiko's story.
Director Kôji Fukada doesn't make it easy to follow the timeline and leaves much of the film intentionally ambiguous, including the question of whether the kidnapped girl was sexually assaulted and what motivated Ichiko's nephew to abduct a girl he didn't know. The plot depends on certain contrivances (the nephew refuses to say anything to the police, including how he met the girl) and Fukada leaves it to the audience to figure out the timeline jumps (Ichiko's hairdo is the most obvious clue). Like the director's previous film Harmonium, the story serves as a crucible to explore complicated relationships and intense emotions under pressure.
This psychological drama delves into the punishing ordeal suffered by Ichiko, the complicated relationship between Ichiko and Motoko (whose feelings for the older woman are more than simply friendship), and the feelings of guilt and betrayal that lead to an act of vengeance. It's a provocative experience that tackles complex and nuanced emotions, but it demands a lot of work on the part of the viewer and may leave members of the audience confused or frustrated.
The DVD includes a "making of" featurette (it is 42 minutes long and in Japanese with English subtitles) and the bonus short film Love Comes Later from India, an English-language drama about an undocumented hotel worker.