Norwegian Wood (2012)

Set in Tokyo in the 1960s, this lush, eventually torpid adaptation of Haruki Murakami's more nuanced 1987 cult-favorite novel considers youthful love, loss, and eros through the relationship between Toru (Kenichi Matsuyama), a university student, and emotionally fragile Naoko (Babel's Rinko Kikuchi). Bound together by the suicide of Naoko's childhood beau, who was also Toru's best friend, the two take different paths to escape the presence of death. Director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) adds the music of Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood to pump up the tonal cues. B-