The film contains six stories which are presented in two parts. The first shows the main event from which everything else develops. It concerns the murder of a young girl, Emili, newly arrived at primary school. She makes good friends with four other girls in her class. They play together at school and outside of school. They visit each others houses. One day while playing around on open land, they accidentally kick their ball in the same direction as a man is walking - away from them - although the audience knows he has been sitting watching the girls for a little while. At first only his legs are seen as he picks up the ball. Then his back, as he meets with the girls and tells them he's doing some work nearby in the school and would like one of them to help him. The man picks Emili. They go into the school gymnasium. The friends hang around. They worry because Emili hasn't returned. The friends go into the gym and find Emili dead on the floor. After extensive interviews by the police, the girls remain in such shock they cannot remember the man's face or anything about him. The remaining four girls visit Emili's mother Asako at home, with flowers. They are invited in. Asako tells them she cannot forgive them for failing to watch out for Emili or to tell what they know. She says the girls must do penance for her daughter's death and will do so until they remember. The film then continues with the individual stories of the girls, as young women. By the time we see them as young women, fifteen years have passed since the murder. The remainder of the first half contains the stories of three of the girls. The second half has the story from the last girl, but also that of the mother Asako, who herself has been doing penance for the death of her daughter. She has by now a son, who at this point is the same age as Emili was when she was murdered.
All the girls have been mentally affected by their experience at school. Their lives or personalities have become almost dysfunctional. The first is terrified to go out and marries a control freak, who ultimately she kills. The second is a school teacher, so hard on herself, so strict with the pupils, and seemingly without personality or humour, that no one understands her. She nearly kills a man, who has entered the school with a knife and terrorises her class while they are having a swimming lesson. She attends Kendo classes. One day she hallucinates and sees the man she's almost killed standing in front of her, who she attacks, whereas it is really another student of the class. The third girl has major psychological problems and lives at home with her parents. She has an older brother. She and the audience see him behaving strangely towards a young girl. His step-daughter is also clearly afraid of him. One day the girl is asked to visit her brother by her mother. She gets there to find her brother in an inappropriate situation with his step-daughter and strangles him to protect the child.
By this time Asako realises that she has put a hex on all the girls. She has managed to keep track of them over the years, and has remained in touch in a menacing way, reminding them of their duty to fulfill the penance they owe her. However Asako writes to the fourth girl, saying she wants to pardon her. It's all gone too far. The attitude and behaviour of the girl in the final story is very different from the rest. This is a young woman, scheming and uncompromising, controlling and selfish in her treatment of men. She has affairs with married men and is obsessed with police officers. To the extent that she sleeps with her own sister's husband, a police officer, becomes pregnant and ultimately kills him by pushing him downstairs, when he refuses to leave his wife. One day the girl hears a voice in an interview and recognises that of Emili's murderer. She phones Asako, who decides to visit the man at a school he is has set-up in another province. There is a struggle. Asako escapes. But the man now knows where to find her.
Asako's story is the final one and the final piece of the circle. At university Asako was in love with a man. But he was in love with Asako's best friend, who commits suicide. She leaves a suicide note. Asako finds her and the note while the friend is still alive, but doesn't do anything to help save her. Asako keeps the note hidden for years. She is offered marriage and an engagement ring by this same man, but ultimately agrees to an arranged marriage with another, the heir of a family dynasty. She keeps the engagement ring with the letter.
Moving forward, one day while playing in the family house, Emili finds a sealed letter - the suicide note - and a very pretty ring - the engagement ring. In a dare, all the young girls take prized objects from their homes to a ruined house they've discovered, and hide everything in an old safe in an upstairs room. Emili takes the letter and the ring. The man (who will ultimately kill Emili) visits the ruined house shortly after as a prospective buyer. He finds the ring and the suicide note, which he didn't know existed, and confirms with the agent that the wife of the owner of the property is Asako. He then kills Emili in revenge for the death of the woman he really loved. In Asako's story, they meet at the man's request in this same house. They both have secrets to tell. The man explains how he found the letter and ring, and admits to the murder of Emili. Asako explains that Emili was in fact his own child from their one night together and that he'd murdered his own daughter. The man commits suicide in front of Asako by throwing himself under a train on a nearby railway track. Asako must now spend the rest of her life paying penance for the lives she has helped to destroy.
There were times in this film where I almost couldn't breathe. Masterful and compelling.
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