Teaching the Nightingale (2017)

"Teaching the Nightingale" is based on a story from In the Empire of Dreams by Dianne Highbridge. Teruko, a Japanese woman in her mid-thirties, is struggling with a secret dilemma, but she cannot tell anyone, not even Larry, an openly and happily gay Australian who she thinks of as her best friend. When she meets Larry for lunch one day in an upscale Tokyo coffee shop, she is reaching a crisis point. As Larry begins to sense that Teruko is holding something back, we see what happened to her the previous weekend when she went hiking in the mountains. The two days she spent in the mountains led Teruko to a turning point in another significant relationship and a decision to move on, but now she feels trapped and hopeless. In a moment of weakness she asks Larry to do something for her that will bring their friendship to a turning point. "Teaching the Nightingale" is a film about about secrets and lies that we tell ourselves and others, about private passions and public personas, and about the difficulty of breaking with the past.