SYNOPSIS:Lakeside Murder Case is an audacious new mystery from director Shinji Aoyama, whose Cannes-award-winning epic Eureka (2000) is one of modern Japanese cinema’s defining masterworks. While Lakeside shares themes with other entries in Aoyama’s acclaimed oeuvre – notably the scourge of violence in today’s Japan, and its effects on youth – this engrossing new work is a more accessible film, a comparatively mainstream suspense thriller. Koji Yakusho (Cure, Shall We Dance?), arguably Japan’s greatest working actor, stars as Shunsuke, an overworked advertising director separated from his wife, Misako, and engaged in an illicit affair with his co-worker Eisako. Shunsuke meets up with his former wife at an isolated, exclusive private school, where they hope their young daughter will gain admission; three families are gathered here for a seminar, organized by the school’s enigmatic dean. But that night, when Shunsuke is away from the group, one of the visitors is murdered – and the appalled Shunsuke is convinced by the school and the families to assist in covering up the crime for the sake of the children. But soon Shunsuke finds that a conspiracy is stirring, and the killing did not take place as he had been led to believe. While Lakeside functions principally as a murder mystery, director Aoyama also uses the genre to analyze the dangers inherent in the drive for success, and the ways in which traditional Japanese social conformity can create monstrous behavior in the name of propriety. Lakeside may be a more commercial effort for the director, but it’s no less provocative or intelligent for it. -- Travis Crawford
ya tenia planeado obligarlo a traducirme esto incluso usando la violencia de ser necesario pero me acabo de dar cuenta que los subs estan en chino y no en coreano asi que necesitamos alguien que sepa chino, ¿hay alguien?