When Ichiko falls for Eri, she frets over how her widowed father will react to the news that she is a lesbian. When she reveals her secret, her dad lets her in on a few of his own: both he and Ichiko’s deceased mother were gay and kept lovers. While Ichiko bonds with her father over her newly discovered family history, Eri, an aspiring lawyer, battles with her own stern and disapproving dad.

Based on Ebine Yamaji’s yuri manga comic book of the same name, Kôji Kawano’s film moves gracefully from private moments of intimacy (the girls alternately paint each other’s toenails, shoot their portraits on the beach and play with rubber duckies while naked in the bathtub) to exuberant scenes that perfectly convey the sense of being young and in love in the big city. Giddy J-Pop and J-Rock songs punctuate montages of the girls running through bustling crosswalks and making out in cabs. But puppy love is not all handmade cards and kisses, and both girls test the limits of their relationship — Ichiko toys with her attraction to a punk rock lesbian while Eri decides whether to sacrifice her new love for school and her professional future.

Shot in a gauzy, dreamy palate of blues and greens, the girls’ love affair is the stuff of romance novels (albeit lesbian romance novels) as the two opposites — sunny, cheery Ichiko and tense, bookish Eri — attract in moments of explosive sensuality and tender affection.