Confessions 2010 Japanese Movie
Confessions, also known as Kokuhaku, is a Japanese psychological thriller movie from 2010 directed by Tetsuya Nakashima. It is based on Kanae Minato's 2008 debut mystery book, which won the 2009 Honya Taisho award (Japan Booksellers Award). The movie did well at the box office and with critics. It won Best Picture at the 34th Japan Academy Prize and the 53rd Blue Ribbon Awards. It was also in the running for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards.
The death of Yuko's four-year-old daughter breaks her heart as a middle school teacher. The next time she goes back to school, she learns that her students killed her daughter.
Release date: 5 June 2010 (Japan)
Starring: Takako Matsu
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Adapted from: Confessions
Distributed by: Toho Co., Ltd., MGM Home Entertainment
Box office: $45.2 million
Language: Japanese and English
Confessions 2010 Japanese Movie: Trailer
Confessions 2010 Japanese Movie: Sypnosis and Plot
Takako Matsu plays junior high school teacher Yuko Moriguchi, who tells her rude and disruptive class that she is quitting before spring break. She says that she used to take her four-year-old daughter Manami to school with her because her HIV-positive father was sick. Manami was found dead in the school pool one day. It's her classmates "Student A" and "Student B" who killed her daughter, she says. Yuko found a small bunny purse that didn't fit with Manami's things. This made her question one of her students, Shuya Watanabe. Shuya, Student A, said she killed Manami and then made fun of her caring response by saying, "Just kidding."
Yuko tells them who they are and says that turning them in wouldn't make a difference because the killers are children and are protected by the Juvenile Law of 1947. She thinks that as their teacher, she needs to teach them a lesson by making them pay for their mistakes. She says that she put Manami's father's HIV-infected blood into the milk boxes of the two students who killed Manami. After Yuko's confession, the movie jumps between the events that happened before and after the confession, told from the point of view of three of Yuko's students.
Naoki Shimomura, Student B, locks himself in because he thinks that drinking the tainted milk gave him AIDS. When his mother finds out that her son killed Manami, she plans to kill herself and kill her son to end their pain. But during the fight that followed, Naoki killed his mother, and the cops then arrested him. At the same time, Shuya says that his mother abused him before she left to become a scientist. He did well in science after she left him, from making small inventions to keeping records of how he killed and dissected animals.
Shuya's first public invention was an electric wallet that keeps thieves out. It won him an award at a science show, but it didn't make the news because the "Lunacy Murder" case was getting more attention. He made the anti-theft wallet better and wanted to test it on someone. He asked Naoki to help. They chose to test the wallet on Yuko's daughter, but the girl passed out while they did it. Shuya thought this meant he was dead. Naoki was so mad that he threw Manami into the pool and she drowned, showing that he was the real killer. Mizuki Kitahara, a classmate, tells Shuya that she thinks Yuko lied about the milk being infected because it didn't make sense as a way for the disease to spread. Mizuki tells him that she feels like the girl from the "Lunacy Murder" case, who killed her parents with poison. They fall in love, but Shuya kills Mizuki after a fight because he feels like she left him and doesn't want to be loved again.
When Shuya goes to the university where his mother works, he hopes to see her again, but she has already married someone else. Because he thinks she has forgotten about him, he sets off a bomb at his school, where he is supposed to give a speech at the graduation. He is shocked when the bomb doesn't go off. A call comes in from Yuko telling Shuya that she moved the bomb to his mother's office. It's her final revenge, she says, to let Shuya's mother die by his own hand. She also says that now that her revenge is over, Shuya can start to change. After a laugh, Yuko says, "Just kidding."