The Million Yen Girl shown at Udine Far East Festival involves a 21 year old student who heads for the road after experiencing disappointment with her family and disillusionment with the difficulty of earning a living in Tokyo. Wanting to become independent, she co-rents an appartment with a total stranger who throws out a kitten she adopted, after which she tosses all his ownings out the window and gets the book for alientation of private property. After a short term in jail, her welcome home is cold and she can count on no support from her family or friends, either moral nor financial.

Finding a job at a beach resort quick-food counter, she starts to save up a million yen so she can pay the deposit for lodgings in the next town of her journey. Then she moves on to the real countryside and works on a peach farm. The people are friendlier there but locals, once they catch glimpse of her Tokyo profile and elegance, try to force a representation role on to her, for promoting the region as "Peach Girl". Forced to admit she is an ex-con, she then moves on to a household goods store job, located 100 kilometers outside of Tokyo and thinks she has found love when a co-worker pursues her and seems considerate about her problems.

What happens next is a twist that only viewers should find out, but the freshnes of this Japanese road story has won appraise for the filmmaker Tanada Yuki for its graceful direction and depiction of several different areas in Japan and differing characters of inhabitants...
Helen Dobrenski