マイ・ブロークン・マリコ

Out of the blue, Tomoyo Shiino (Mei Nagano) learns about the suicide of her friend Mariko. Taken away by grief, Shiino takes it upon herself to snatch away the urn from Mariko's abusive father. The movie accompanies Shiino, portraying her dealing with the loss of her best friend, reminiscences of their friendship, and the helplessness felt when being unable to protect the ones we love - in life, as well as in death.

In itself, there aren't a lot of very new ideas regarding the theme of grief and coping, however the performance of Shiino's actress Mei Nagano is definitely worth mentioning; she does an amazing job carrying across the complicated feelings in a very heartfelt and raw way.

Regarding language learning purposes, most of the vocabulary should be relatively standard, however there are some emotional outbursts which may be hard to follow without subtitles.