Fridae

For diehard romantics and fans of J-pop, the must-watch of the week is Midnight Sun. It's a sweet and touching Japanese romance which stars the 19-year-old singer-songwriter Yui, who's often dubbed "the Japanese Michelle Branch". A sensitive guitar-strumming poet who's made waves on the music charts, Yui proves here that she can act too.

Yui plays a girl stricken with a real disease called xeroderma pigmentosum, or XP. As a result, she has to stay indoors during the day because exposure to sunlight can give her skin cancer quickly. Yui goes out only at night to sing and play her guitar in public.

One night, just before the break of dawn, she looks through her bedroom window and sees a handsome boy (Tsukamoto Takashi) standing with a surfboard, waiting for his friends. Intrigued, she continues to watch him every night. When the two accidentally meet, romance blooms even as her health deteriorates...

Midnight Sun is infused with the same kind of unabashed romanticism found in that 2004's Crying Out Love from the Centre of the World and 2005's Be With You. Written and directed by 25-year-old Koizumi Norihiro, it presents the idealized kind of love that only a young person can still believe in. Those of us who carry too many battle scars from failed romances will find the film hard to stomach.

Still, there's no denying that the film is sweet, charming and well-crafted, if somewhat slow. If you've never heard a single Yui song, you should quickly check her out on youtube.com. It's enough to send you running to the cinema.