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FRIDAY

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi is so beautiful that it hardly needs a story, and in fact the austere 1995 film doesn’t have much of one. Lovely, haunted Yumiko lives in dreary industrial Osaka with her husband and their young son. She’s stunned at her husband’s apparent suicide but gradually rebuilds her life, remarrying and moving to a small fishing village. Shot as a series of luminous almost-still-lifes, the film uses fixed-position cameras, medium shots, and natural light to mesmerizing effect. Kore-eda, who reconsidered similar themes of memory and loss more playfully in After Life, keeps his distance, rendering Yumiko’s final emotional epiphany all the more potent. Maborosi screens at 6:30 p.m. at the Embassy of Japan’s Japan Information and Culture Center, Lafayette Centre III, 1155 21st St. NW. Free. For reservations call (202) 238-6901. (Mark Jenkins)