On a sweltering summer's day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing over the loss of her good looks, has travelled to the city in search of the breast-enhancement surgery she thinks will change her life. Accompanying her is Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking. In Natsuko's rundown apartment the three women slowly confront their individual anxieties as well as their relationships under the weight of Midoriko's punishing silence. Eight years later, we are reunited with Natsuko. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family's past as she faces her own uncertain future.
