Hamaguchi has described the three stories as studies, investigating what it takes to make Sliding Doors-style life-bending encounters in fiction feel believable rather than false truthful rather than just convenient, hokey and cheap. The result is a fleet-footed, wistful triptych like little else playing in theatres right now - three short stories, all written by Hamaguchi, bundled into the one feather-light film in which women of different generations find themselves buffeted by the winds of fate.
