Hideyuki Hirayama's official entry of Japan for best foreign picture of the 71st Academy Awards, "Begging for love(1998)" a.k.a "Ai o kou hito, is a story of confronting the fears of your past while being a case study of mother daughter relationship.
The story starts when young Terue(Mieko Harada) leaves Japan for taiwan along with her sick father suffering from consumption. Her father dies after a few months and now she is left in the care of her mother who treats her like a piece of object, always hitting and scolding her. Her mother changes her relationships regularly but her and her lover's behaviour towards young Terue remains the same. She hits her with brooms, sticks, slaps etc and tells her that even her sight makes her angry and tells her that she was a result of a rape she suffered and she was not a child she wanted.
Young Terue suffers such fate everyday until one day when she decides to run away from her mother, which she is able to do with the help of her step-brother.
When she herself becomes a mother after many years, she decides to provide her daughter with every happiness that she was deprived of and love
her unconditionally. When Terue begins her journey to find her father's ashes her daughter Migusa also accompanied her along her journey,
They both reach taiwan where they meet their relatives and with the help of them begin their quest to find her father's ashes.
After many efforts they are finally able to locate the ashes and collect them, when migusa tells Terue that collecting the ashes was not her main purpose rather she wanted to find her mother and ask her questions and confront her fears of childhood.
They go to Terue's mother salon which migusa located, where Terue gets a haircut from her mother. She then cleaverly tells her that she is her daughter and leaves her after telling her that she always wanted to just hear 'You are Cute" from her mother.
On their return in the bus, terue tells her daughter that though her mother always hurt her, she still loved her and just wanted to be liked by her.
The Sountrack is really great and mellow and fits the mood of the scenes perfectly, The performances, especially by the actresses portraying young terue, were top notch, able to convey real emotions and pain of characters. The Pacing and camera moment were also beautifully done, almost like the taiwanese new wave movies of Edward yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien.
A really great film which was a surprise find but has become one of the best i had ever seen. Many people may not know about this film but it is a type of film everyone should at least see once.
