Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

This is a great film, showcasing how strong a woman and a mother can be. This is a story of an extremely mentally strong woman who has touched the lives of people around her some close, some not so. I have managed to watch this film as part of the film festival in Sydney and this was the movie that I was most emotionally felt and touched. This film made me remember my mother who was as equally strong mentally and supported me and my siblings alone. was hard to hold back my tears. Not just me, the other audience must have felt too as I heard a few people crying. Not only she, herself is strong, but she also showed the others in need how to get stronger and supported the people around her. The people in turn supported her when she was in need of their help. And they are so willing to do anything for her. This is a film about family struggles, undying toughness when faced with adverse reality, the importance of the care, love and support of loved ones. Very aptly titled film - her love is so strong and heated that it can even boil water.

HER LOVE BOILS BATHWATER / BURNING LOVE ENOUGH TO BOIL WATER (YU WO WAKASUHODO NO ATSUI AI). Viewed at CineMatsuri 2017. Screenplay = nine (9) stars; cinematography/lighting = eight (8) stars; sound = seven (7) stars; score = seven (7) stars; subtitles/translations = seven (7) stars. Director Ryôta Nakano, working from his dazzling screenplay, provides an emotionally over-the-top and tearful family tale intertwined with humor and marked with multiple surprise (actually, bombshell) endings. It's quite a show featuring strong female characters defined by actresses who deliver dynamite performances (see below). Nakano's plot involves a De Facto family matriarch who is determined to pull together a fractured family, reopen the family's shuttered bathhouse business, and (you guessed it) re-starting the boiling of bathwater before succumbing (in a few weeks) to an unexpected and recently diagnosed fatal illness (the big "C"). The Director, of course, is working within the ever popular Japanese "Gaman" film genre (where protagonists persevere despite seemingly overwhelming odds and achieve a tear-wrenching triumph). An exceptionally strong cast is lead by actresses Rie Miyazawa (who plays the condemned over-achieving mother), Hana Sugisaki (a teenager heretofore lacking a backbone and a father), and Aoi Ito (a precocious nine-year old lacking a birth mother). The ancestry of these three is not as it appear to be initially. Cinematography/projection (wide-screen (1: 2.35), DCP, color) and lighting are outstanding. Sound is solid but full surround effects seem to be lacking. Score is perky and adds to scenes. Subtitles are good enough, but translations of signs and other text is occasionally missing. A not-to-be-missed movie! WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.