The Japanese Lover

Multiple narratives swirl around Alma Belasco, a Polish teenager who escaped the Nazis in 1939 and arrived in San Francisco to share a privileged life with an indulgent aunt and uncle. Now 73, Alma is a favorite resident in a senior facility, devotedly looked after by her grandson Seth and her caretaker Irina. Alma begins to divulge careful details of her well-guarded past to the young pair, revealing five decades framed by a never-ending passion for her one true—albeit impossible—love. Joanna Gleason mostly succeeds at voicing a broad range of ages, backgrounds, even ethnicities. That said, a few minutes of direction spent on pronunciation—Alma's cat's name is pronounced neh-koh for the Japanese word for cat, not knee-koh; the name Takao doesn't rhyme with "cacao"—would have led to a more accurate performance.