When the Museum Is Closed

Rika Horauchi has a new part-time job: every Monday, when the museum is closed, she talks with a statue of Venus. The conversations are in Latin. Her old university professor recommended her for the post because of her exceptional command of the language.

Rika is reluctant at first, but she warms to the work. The rest of her week is spent in a frozen-food warehouse, and her life is otherwise ordinary and unremarkable. In the quiet of the empty museum, Venus comes to life, and the two talk about anything at all.

Venus widens Rika's world, in her thinking and in her feelings, and the two fall in love. Then the museum's curator, Hashibami, makes plain that he intends to keep Venus for himself. Rika has to decide what she will do about it.

This is a surreal, queer love story with a comic and tender tone. Under the strangeness it deals with ordinary emotions and worries: loneliness, freedom, how beauty is judged, and how society looks at women. It is light in mood and surprising in turn.