In Japan, Daishi Matsunaga adapts the semi-autobiographical story of Makoto Takayama into a restrained LGBTQ+ melodrama: the meeting of Kōsuke and Ryūta, two men separated by class, money, and family duties, shifts from transaction to attachment, then to mourning. Presented in October 2022 in Tokyo, in theaters in France on October 8, 2025, the film explores, with modesty, power and gratitude.
Two men, two worlds, one same flaw
Tokyo drizzles. In an interior as neat as a showcase, Kōsuke observes himself. He works for a fashion magazine, cultivates muscle, line, light. Solitude, too. When he hires Ryūta as a fitness coach, it is initially a transaction. The sessions follow one another, sweat mingles with glances, then something gives way. Love, perhaps. Or its mirage. Daishi Matsunaga, who co-writes the screenplay with Kyōko Inukai based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, films this shift with surgical precision, without excess, without emphasis, leaving the silences the task of opening hearts.
In Egoist), the city never really roars, it rustles. The streets of Japan remain off-screen. The essential takes place behind closed doors, between living rooms with smooth furniture, modest kitchens, steam-saturated bathrooms. Bodies approach, words retreat. The camera, mobile but discreet, embraces this dance of proximities and withdrawals where affection stumbles over money. For Ryūta, younger, comes from a world where the present is only bought on credit and where economic dependence poisons impulses. The romance cracks, renegotiates, falls silent. It never quite abdicates.
A story that refuses unique contours
120 minutes to traverse several lives. The narrative arc, at its core, holds little: a meeting, a liaison, a detour through disappearance, then a recomposition around a maternal figure. The film’s power lies in a representation rooted in Asian queer cinema of male relationships. Moreover, social class tensions influence emotions, and mourning redefines loyalties. Nothing is demonstrative. Hiroko Sebu lays down a music in the background, almost a murmur, while Ryō Hayano’s editing breathes, creating floating zones where more is guessed than known.
The performances reach far. Ryohei Suzuki, as Kōsuke, inhabits the shiny surface of a man very concerned with his appearance, revealing an intimate, old flaw that professional successes do not fill. Hio Miyazawa, as Ryūta, gives simple gestures a naked gravity: apologetic smile, lowered gaze, way of holding a cup as if apologizing for existing. Yūko Nakamura imposes, as Kōsuke’s mother, a muted, almost ritual presence, speaking to the weight of ancestors and the difficulty of being oneself under their eyes.
The staging, the ellipsis, and modesty
The cinematography by Naoya Ikeda works with muted interiors where shadow tempers colors. Skins are filmed up close, never fetishized. The camera glides, stops, starts again, like a breath. A claimed sobriety that refuses pathos. The melodrama here does not snap, it infuses. Breaks arise without noise, thanks to a cut, a door closing. The underlying financial dynamic is perceived with envelopes on the table and promises of "support." Gradually, this dynamic unbalances the romantic harmony.
Matsunaga seeks neither exemplarity nor thesis. He films the power that insinuates itself into love when money circulates poorly. Moreover, he shows the shame clinging to the skin when one changes class without a manual. He also evokes the fear of being perceived as a benefactor lover or a protégé. In this gray area, the characters reinvent the words "giving" and "grateful." They attempt to inhabit an intimacy that is not a precarious lease.
A restrained melodrama, until the shift
The film advances at an even pace, faithful to its interiors, until the shift that recomposes it. There is no need to say more, except that it involves loss and opens another axis: the link between Kōsuke and Ryūta’s mother, a figure of frugal, dignified parenthood, granting gratitude an almost liturgical amplitude. Matsunaga then establishes another, unprecedented couple, where gratitude serves as a common language. The melodrama assumes itself, but without heaviness. Indeed, the tear arises from a hand placed on a bowl. Moreover, it comes from a breath held. Finally, it appears from a silence that lasts a little longer than usual.
Egoist is born from a book by Makoto Takayama, semi-autobiographical, where intimate experience serves as a compass. Kyōko Inukai and Daishi Matsunaga draw from it a screenplay that retains the modesty of situations and the sobriety of confessions. The adaptation works on the ellipsis. Kōsuke’s past surfaces in fragments—a youth marked by absence, a departure from the province, while Ryūta carries the present with all his might, torn between desire and filial duty. The film’s language remains simple, almost everyday, as if words refused to say the essential.
The 120-minute duration allows for this subtle progression. We follow the heroes without judging them, we lose them, we find them, we accompany them in their renunciations. The title, Egoist, holds an ironic enigma: who are we talking about? The one who gives too much? The one who accepts? Or the ego wounded by the inequality of positions? The moral remains open, like stories that take care of the viewer.
Japanese context: queer representations, scenes, and counter-shots
In Japan, LGBTQ+ stories often advance quietly. Mainstream production remains stingy with complex queer characters. In recent years, festivals and Asian gay art-house cinema have served as valuable relays. Egoist unfolds there naturally: world premiere in October 2022 at the Tokyo International Film Festival, circulation in programs dedicated to diversity, then occasional reprises in events in France, notably, where the film finds an attentive resonance. This trajectory is not trivial: it speaks to the persistence of an ecosystem where discovery passes through curious theaters and informed audiences.
This reception accompanies a broader evolution. Filmmakers and writers multiply non-schematic portraits, far from caricatures. Daishi Matsunaga, already sensitive to these issues, refuses overarching views. He chooses proximity: gestures, utensils, money exchanges that do not abolish desire or empathy. In this proximity, Japanese cinema unfolds an ethic of modesty. Thus, it does not mask pain. However, it prevents it from becoming a spectacle.
From book to screen: an assumed lineage
Egoist by Makoto Takayama is read as a story of thwarted formation. The writing advances through brief scenes, through memories that settle. The film takes up this movement but offers it the materiality of spaces and the vulnerability of faces. The photography by Naoya Ikeda specifies textures, the editing by Ryō Hayano sets up these breaths that characterize the adaptation, the music by Hiroko Sebu refrains from commenting. We recognize the virtue of a team effort: nothing steals the spotlight, everything contributes to the same tone.
Actors: a rare alchemy
A word must be said about Ryohei Suzuki and Hio Miyazawa. Together, they draw the oscillation of a romance seeking its balance point. Suzuki establishes the rigor of an orderly man, whose success poorly protects from fear. Miyazawa, on the other hand, gives discreet sacrifice an intensity without pathos, never imposing distress, letting it happen. In a second circle, Yūko Nakamura and Sawako Agawa on the Japanese side, parenthood is expressed in the plural, anchoring the film in a sensitive realism where mothers save no one but learn to hold.
Release and circulation: from Japan to France
Shot and produced in Japan, Egoist had a national release in 2023. In France, distribution is handled by Art House, with a theatrical release set for October 8, 2025. The exploitation is announced in the art-house circuit. It is supported by festival networks. Furthermore, the community of independent cinemas also supports it. The VOSTF trailer immediately sets the film’s tone: glances, skins, breath, few words, and this internal movement that leads from attraction to attachment, then to what resists it.
An ethic of attention
One leaves Egoist thinking of the words not said, the choices not made. The film promises no repair. Instead, it grants increased attention to the uses of money. Moreover, it is interested in the blind spots of classes. Additionally, the tiny rituals that allow inhabiting loss also capture its attention. At a time when so many queer stories are asked to explain, convince, reassure, Matsunaga proposes another path: that of a restrained melodrama, ample and discreet, speaking to us in a low voice and, for a long time, continuing to warm the hands.