They all seem to suggest this is a love story among the alm- ond ey ed but the film quickly pivots from that and goes into a different direction.

The oriental girls are pretty, but one involved in a love triangle is somewhat chubby ... guess who wins and who loses?

The ballet scene is quite impressive. Impressive actress (the audition manager and the blondies are also thin and attractive).

In recent years, Japanese director Shunji Iwai has become the dark poet of adolescence, exhibiting a profound insight into how teenagers think and act, capturing the rhythms of their speech and depicting their not always smooth transitions from being a child to becoming an adult. Iwai's bleak 2001 film All About Lily Chou Chou dramatized the isolation and emotional torment that accompanies teenage bullying and the failure of modern technology to provide an outlet for loneliness. The polar opposite is Hana and Alice, his 2004 film just released on DVD, which shows the sweet, perhaps too innocent side of Japanese high school life without any hint of the turbulence displayed in Lily.

Written and directed by Iwai who also composed the musical score, Hana and Alice is a charming comedy/drama of friendship and conflict between two junior high school girls who fall for the same boy, depicting their gradually developing ability to handle complex emotional situations without the typical coming-of-age clichés. Originally filmed as three shorts for a candy commercial, Hana (Anne Suzuki) and Alice (Yu Aoi) are fifteen year old high school students and best friends. Alice is the more free-spirited and creative of the two, while Hana is more reserved but still quite playful. The two go to school each morning on the train, attend the same ballet classes, and are virtually inseparable.

On the train, they both notice a handsome student, Miyamoto (Tomohiro Kaku),traveling with a tall American-looking boy who they guess is his older brother. Hana, pursuing her new interest, joins the school drama club where Miyamoto just happens to be a member. Following him home after school, Hana watches in horror as Miyamoto, his head buried deep in a book and seemingly oblivious to the world around him, walks headfirst into a garage door and is knocked unconscious. Seizing the opportunity after coming to his aid, she tells him that his accident has caused him to forget that she is his girlfriend. She solicits Alice's help in pretending to be his ex-girl friend but the more convoluted the lies become, the more strain is put on the girls' relationship, especially when Alice develops strong romantic feelings for Miyamoto.

Hana and Alice is a beautifully filmed and often very funny film that features gorgeous cinematography by the late Noburu Shinoda, magnificent music and ballet sequences, and brilliant performances by Aoi, Suzuki, and Kaku. The film has many memorable moments including an enchanting five-minute ballet sequence, a tearful confession by Hana minutes before she is to go on stage to perform, a glowing photo shoot of the ballet class outside at night, a fight on the beach between the two girls, and Alice's loving visit with her estranged father. While the story is thin and feels stretched over 135 minutes, Iwai's subtle delineation of character and insight into adolescent life makes Hana and Alice a film to cherish.

"Hana & Alice" began as a series of shorts to promote Nestle's Kit-Kat candy bars. Through the genius of director Shunji Iwai, this evolved into not just a feature film but a darned profound one. In the DVD features he talks about how much of the movie was improvised, but it doesn't show. The end result is a very thoughtful, seemingly carefully-planned, poetic view of friendship, memories, and our individual yearnings for things that are out of our grasp.

The plot itself is very cute and interesting: a girl conspires to snatch a boyfriend by convincing the boy that he has amnesia and is in love with her. He's just dense enough to fall for it. But things get tricky when he starts asking questions, causing the girl to enlist the help of her best friend in deceiving him. It's a great comedy of Shakespearean proportions, but what makes it particularly fun to watch is the gorgeous way in which it's told.

If you're unfamiliar with the works of Shunji Iwai, this is a great place to start. He is a great, artistic director who does not necessarily get bogged down in poetry beyond the realm of mere mortals such as us. In other words, he has a unique visionary style that's not pretentious or overly "experimental". If I were to sum up his style in one sentence, it would be that he allows the scene to speak for itself without too many camera theatrics. You can expect to see long scenes without disruptive cuts, without much camera motion or with a simple, graceful, linear camera movement following the actors rather than jumpy "MTv editing". This is actually an approach used by several great Japanese directors I've seen, like Hideaki Anno ("Ritual") and Takeshi Kitano ("Fireworks", "Kikujoro") and perhaps it is derived from the master Kurosawa himself.

Something else worth noting is that the director composed all the music himself, furthering the idea that the presentation we get is very lucid and consistent with itself. The music compliments each scene as if telling the story, as opposed to background filler.

While the plot may seem straightforward, there's actually quite a lot of complexity under the surface. Each character is driven by some inner yearning, and their actions are not necessarily clear until you discover what drives each person. Thus, things remain unpredictable until the end, when you get a chance to digest why each person is the way they are.

There's fantastic acting all around, and both Anne Suzuki ("Hana") and Yû Aoi ("Alice") get a chance to shine. Hana's moment is in a powerful monologue near the end, while Alice's moment is in a gorgeous ballet routine which will stun you into silence.

Much like German director Wim Wenders' film "Lisbon Story" which began as a promotional spot for the city of Lisbon yet evolved into a poetic masterpiece, Shunji Iwai's "Hana & Alice" is just about the best candy bar commercial you'll ever see in your life.