The story is simple. Mori, a musician, and his wife Maiko, a photographer, go about their lives with everyday routines and creative pursuits that gradually permeate the screen. Maiko has built an impressive career, substantial enough to stage a major solo exhibition. Mori, by contrast, remains stalled-his compositions faltering, he scrapes by with side work in sound design. Their seemingly steady bond slowly drifts into a realm of rupture. As both spouses and artistic companions, they begin to intrude on each other's creative process, stirring subtle discomforts. Their shared moments grow scarce due to differing rhythms of life.

On the surface, it might all feel bland.

Leave the Cat Alone demonstrates a keen directorial hand that never loosens its grip on tension. Consider a late -night scene: Mori, composing on his guitar, is interrupted when Maiko steps out of their bedroom. Standing in the kitchen with beer in hand, she speaks to him. Her figure, caught in reflection on the window behind him, looks like a shadowy double. After a few halting exchanges, Mori asks her to switch off the kitchen light. When she does, her image vanishes abruptly, like a ghost dissolving into the dark. Beyond visualizing the darkness of emotions, the severance of their connection is audaciously expressed through the literal erasure of their physical presence. Scene after scene, the film achieves a striking immediacy, less through its narrative than through its meticulous visual design.

The plot soon takes on a sharper edge. Mori encounters his former lover, Asako, and together they revisit their shared youth on a walk. A lesser film might slip into the clichés of a love triangle, but Leave the Cat Alone turns this dynamic on its head. A fleeting physical touch-the spark of old intimacy-punctures the film's established rhythm, jolting it into a new register oftension. Theirreminiscences, too, are staged with an inventive structure: the pair recall parallel episodes that, guided by olfactory triggers, splinter into dissonant memories, refracted in markedly different hues.

Attimes, when sudden surges of emotion ripple across the screen, the imagery shudders in a way that recalls Japanese cinema's recurring earthquake motif, here reimagined with its own distinct character. Such organic shifts —movements, collisions and recalibrations of cinematic language-lend Leave the Cat Alone a magnetic allure. For those drawn to the small yet finely tuned craftsmanship of contemporary Japanese cinema, this is a discovery well worth savoring​​​