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Movies like Early Spring

Key Features:
Extramarital affair, Marital conflict, Infidelity, Japanese cinema, Existentialism, Urban life, Melancholy, Social commentary
Tone:
restrained, serious, poetic
Target Audience:
Art house enthusiasts, Fans of Japanese cinema, Viewers interested in relationship dramas
Emotional Arc:
Discontent → Isolation

Early Spring

1956-01-29
Early Spring Poster - Find Similar Movies

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

Genres
Drama, Romance
Cast
Chikage Awashima, Ryō Ikebe, Keiko Kishi, Teiji Takahashi, Chishū Ryū, So Yamamura, Haruko Sugimura, Takako Fujino, Daisuke Katō, Masami Taura
Crew
Yasujirō Ozu, Yasujirō Ozu, Kōgo Noda
Rating
7.505(91 votes)
Early SpringEarly Spring
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Early Summer
7.842

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.



Red
Red(2020)
4.7

A married woman with a lovely daughter lives a carefree life, until she meets her ex-lover at a friend’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in ten years, but they begin an affair.



Chikamatsu Monogatari
7.745

When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.



Happy End
Happy End(1999)
6.572

When a wife becomes the breadwinner of her family after her husband loses his job, adultery becomes part of her life.



Scandal
Scandal(1950)
6.9

A celebrity photograph sparks a court case as a tabloid magazine spins a scandalous yarn over a painter and a famous singer.



Late Autumn
7.7

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.



Like Someone in Love
6.885

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.



Maborosi
Maborosi(1995)
7.416

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.



Tokyo Story
8.2

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.



The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.



Guilty of Romance
6.912

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.



Intentions of Murder

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.



Tokyo Family
7.271

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.



Double Suicide
6.893

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.



Husbands and Wives

When their best friends announce that they're separating, a professor and his wife discover the faults in their own marriage.



Café Lumière
6.7

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.



Bed and Board
7.1

Parisian everyman Antoine Doinel has married his sweetheart Christine Darbon, and the newlyweds have set up a cozy domestic life of selling flowers and giving violin lessons while Antoine fitfully works on his long-gestating novel. As Christine becomes pregnant with the couple's first child, Antoine finds himself enraptured with a young Japanese beauty. The complications change the course of their relationship forever.



Floating Clouds
7.7

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.



Japanese Mom
6.6

"Innocent face, D-cup breasts and perfect intercourse skills! Son, this is not your girlfriend anymore but your mother!" Ki-ho brings Yuki from Japan to marry her. However, he starts cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend in Korea. Min-cheol comforted Yuki and thought of her as his daughter-in-law, but one day he realizes he is looking at her as a woman. In the end, Yuki and Min-cheol have intercourse without Ki-ho knowing...



Asako I & II
6.762

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality.



Empire of Passion
6.924

In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.



The Life of Oharu
7.7

In Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.



Feelings
Feelings(2003)
5.9

Two seemingly happily married French couples are forced to contend with a number of issues.



The Obscure Spring
6.86

Igor is a plumber; Pina serves coffee. It is winter and they both deeply desire each other, but they are not free. In trying to figure out how to realize their love, she decides to make a lion costume for her little son and he decides to buy a photocopying machine for his wife. Spring will come at last and with it the consummation of love, filling their lives with hope and sex.



Three
Three(2010)
6

Hanna and Simon are in a 20 year marriage with an unexciting relationship. By chance, they both meet and start separate affairs with Adam. Adam has no idea that his two lovers are married, until they are all found out when Hanna becomes pregnant, with the natural doubts stemming from their situation.



Yearning
Yearning(1964)
8.1

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.



Love in the Afternoon
7.245

Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.



April Story
7.205

In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.



Made in Italy
6.067

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.



Right Now, Wrong Then

By mistake, film director Ham Chun-su arrives in Suwon a day early. With time to kill before his lecture the next day, Chun-su stops by a restored, old palace and meets an artist named Yoon Hee-jung. Together, they go to Hee-jung's workshop to look at her paintings, have Sushi with Soju for dinner, and get close. Later, they go to another café and have more drinks with Hee-jung's acquaintances. When asked if he is married, Chun-su is forced to reveal the fact that he is, and Hee-jung gets deeply disappointed...



Given
Given(2020)
8.3

Haruki secretly had feelings for Akihiko for years, but Akihiko was still in a relationship with his roommate, the violinist Ugetsu Murata. Haruki, Akihiko, and Ugetsu's love clashes and starts to move forward.



Harmonium
Harmonium(2016)
6.543

Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio's family life.



Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.



Tokyo Sonata
7.4

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.



An Unexpected Love
6.3

It tells the story of Marcos and Ana, who have been married for more than 25 years, but enter into an existential crisis that leads them to separate. The life of singles seems fascinating and exciting at first, but soon it also becomes monotonous for her and nightmarish for him.



Equinox Flower
7.428

Wataru Hirayama's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares that she is in love with a coworker and is adamant to live life her own way, instead of agreeing to an arranged marriage. Outwitted by his female relatives, Hirayama stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.



Last Night
6.1

Michael and Joanna are a young and successful married couple who appear to have it all. But when Michael finds himself alone on a business trip with an attractive new colleague and Joanna encounters the other great love of her life, each is thrust into an evening of temptation.



Addicted
Addicted(2014)
5.9

A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.



Sound of the Mountain
7.315

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.



Love Life
Love Life(2022)
7.2

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.



An Autumn Afternoon

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.



The Married Woman
6.848

A superficial woman finds conflict choosing between her abusive husband and her vain lover.



Shutter
Shutter(2008)
5.556

A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.



Wet Woman in the Wind
5.724

Dissipated Tokyo playwright, Kosuke has retreated to the countryside after deciding that he's done with women, but the indefatigable cat-in-heat Shiori has other ideas, clinging to Kosuke like his shadow.



In the Realm of the Senses

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.



Happy Hour
7.357

Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"



Miss Oyu
Miss Oyu(1951)
7.2

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.



A Good Lawyer's Wife
5.715

A woman, married and with a child but becoming increasingly distant from her husband who is already cheating on her, reluctantly enters a secret relationship with her neighbor, a teenage boy.



Audition
Audition(2000)
7.1

Seven years after the death of his wife, widower Shigeharu seeks advice on how to find a new wife from a colleague. Taking advantage of their position as a film company, they stage an audition. Interviewing a series of women, Shigeharu is enchanted by the quiet Asami. But soon things take a twisted turn as Asami isn’t what she seems to be.



The Secret
7.105

Marie, who works as a successful door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson, has been married to her husband Francois for 12 years and has a two-year-old son. Though she is relatively content with her life, she feels something is wanting. Enter 50-year old African-American Bill. Initially she is annoyed by his insouciance, but she finds that she is irresistibly attracted to him. Soon the two are in the midst of sordid illicit affair. She knows little about her new lover, and he seems uninterested in learning about her, but the long sessions of lovemaking are something else entirely. Feeling out of control, Marie is increasingly repelled by her own actions. Psychologically, she struggles to reconcile her torrid encounters with Bill and mundane domestic chores such as bathing her son. Moreover, she finds herself incapable of hiding her adulterous behavior, rather she comes home with scratches and hickeys all over her body, to the devastation Francois.



The End of Summer
7.466

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.



Fidelity
Fidelity(2019)
6.7

Lena is a talented midwife and gynaecologist, her husband Serezha is an actor at a provincial drama theatre. They are close and gentle with each other, but there is no sex. Lena suspects that Serezha has an affair, but she worries quietly and does not reveal her jealousy. Instead of sorting out her relationship with her husband, Lena starts to betray him with chance acquaintances. Gradually Lena’s parallel life gets out of control and changes her original life.



Heavenly Forest
7.538

Amateur photographer Makoto and the homely but endearing Shizuru meet during their university entrance ceremony and become instant friends. Shy by nature, Makoto finds himself opening up around Shizuru, who is secretly in love with him.



Love & Pop
7.7

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.



Tokyo Twilight
7.682

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.



Tokyo Decadence
5.914

A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.



Couple Therapy for Cheaters

Reckless and in love, Viviana and Modesto are bound by an uncontrollable passion. Their secret relationship ends up in front of an incredulous therapist, who'll anyway help them understanding their feelings and dealing with their desire to follow the true love.



An Eye for Beauty
3.4

An architect and his wife see their relationship challenged.



Sex, Shame & Tears
6.6

A comedic drama featuring two couples and two old friends in Mexico City. Tomas visits Carlos and Ana, while Miguel and Andrea are joined by Maria. The presence of guests triggers lust, rejection, infidelities, reconciliation and other consequences.



The Other Man
5.4

The story of a husband who suspects his wife of adultery, and sets out to track down the other man in her life.



Another World
6.8

An executive manager, his wife and his family, at the point when his professional choices are about to overturn all their lives. Philippe Lemesle and his wife are separating, their love irretrievably damaged by pressures of work. A successful executive in industrial conglomerate, Philippe no longer knows how to respond to the contradictory demands of his bosses. Yesterday they wanted a manager, today an enforcer. Now he must decide what his life really means.



Another 9 1/2 Weeks
4.556

Despondent at losing his lover, a man wanders the streets of Paris and has an affair with her kinky friend.



A Simple Story
5.9

A middle-aged woman leaves her partner and drifts back to her ex-husband, while the lives of her middle class friends intersect with her own.



Shortcomings
6

When his girlfriend leaves for New York City on a 3-month-long internship, a strongly opinionated Berkeley arthouse movie theater manager begins exploring life as a bachelor.



Faithless
Faithless(2000)
6.6

Scripted by Ingmar Bergman, this very personal film is about a destructive affair which wrecks the marriage of an actress (Marianne) and musician (Markus). Wanting to continue the affair, Marianne moves in with her lover. But she is tormented by Markus' decision not to let her have custody of their daughter. Finally Markus announces he may have a solution to the stalemate, but this leads to deception, lies and ultimately, tragedy.



The Idiot
The Idiot(1951)
7

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.



A Man
A Man(2022)
7

Akira works as a lawyer. One day, he meets with his former client Rie, who asks Akira to perform a background check on her late husband Daisuke.



Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.



A Short Film About Love

19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...



Tokyo Fiancée
6.275

A Japanophile young Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student, in this charming and tender tale of young love and cultural discovery.



Ride or Die
6.683

Rei helps the woman she's been in love with for years escape her abusive husband. While on the run, their feelings for each other catch fire.



Joint Custody
5.738

A wife finds out her husband has a mistress. She decides to propose her to share her life with her husband, alternating every two weeks.



Happiness
Happiness(1965)
7.412

A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.



Blue Spring
7.054

Soon after being named the new leader of his high school's gang system, Kujo grows bored with the violence and hatred that surround him. He wants desperately to abandon his post… but his once-enviable position of power has a strange way of making him feel powerless.



Emmanuelle
6

An employee at the French Embassy in Bangkok invites his wife to join him – and enjoy the benefits of their open marriage.



Bright Future
6.8

Two friends who work together at a Tokyo laundry are increasingly alienated from everyday life. They become fascinated with a deadly jellyfish.



Woman in the Dunes
8.2

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.



An Affair of Love
6.2

A man and a woman meet to fulfill her sexual fantasy.



Black Rain
7.5

Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.



White Wedding
6.5

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.



Husbands
Husbands(1970)
6.7

A common friend's sudden death brings three men, married with children, to reconsider their lives and ultimately leave the country together. But mindless enthusiasm for regained freedom will be short-lived.



Imprint
Imprint(2006)
6.822

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.



Love Letter
7.8

Hiroko attends the memorial service of her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, who died in a mountain-climbing incident. Although Itsuki's mother says that their old house is gone, Hiroko records the address listed under his name in his yearbook and sends him a letter. Surprisingly, she receives a reply, and discovers it came from his old classmate, a girl who also happens to be called Itsuki Fujii.



Ikiru
Ikiru(1952)
8.3

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.



The Day After
6.495

On her first day at work, Areum replaces a woman who broke up with the boss. The wife of the boss finds a love note, bursts into the office, and mistakes Areum for the other woman.



A Snake of June
6.8

A woman is being stalked by a stranger. His stalking turns to blackmail when he sends her copies of photos of her in an embarrassing position. Now he controls her and she has to do anything he says. Anything.



Love Affair(s)
6.3

Vacations in the French countryside. Daphne, three months pregnant, finds herself alone to welcome Maxime, her boyfriend François’ cousin. François had to leave in a hurry for Paris to cover for a sick colleague. For four days, while waiting for his return, Daphne and Maxime get to know each other and share very intimate stories that bring them closer...



Red Desert
7.343

In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.



MOTHER
MOTHER(2020)
6.995

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.



Wife of a Spy
6.719

It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.



Juha
Juha(1999)
6.706

A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel.



Diary of a Fleeting Affair

A single mother and a married man enter into an affair with the understanding that their relationship is purely sexual. Though they agree the relationship has no future, they find themselves increasingly drawn into each other's company.



Full Moon in Paris
6.8

Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.



Lost in Beijing
6.5

A look at modern-day life in China's capital centered on a ménage-a-quatre involving a young woman, her boss, her husband and her boss's wife.



Rashomon
Rashomon(1950)
8

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.



House
House(1977)
7.315

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.



Love
Love(2015)
6.5

Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the seismic effect it will have on their relationship, they invite their pretty neighbor into their bed.



Close Range Love
7.45

A smart high school student falls in love with her English teacher after she receives one-on-one tutoring from him.



In the Mood for Love
8.093

In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.

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