Married couple Yuji and Yoshie receive an invitation to the closing of Cinema Orion in Kyoto. They recall how they first met there as children in the late 1950s. The film then flashes back to a time when a man named Tomekichi Senba, a cinema-lover, is trying to become an apprentice of Orion’s manager Matsuzo and his wife Toyo.
When Matsuzo dies, Tomekichi and Toyo take over the day-to-day operations of the cinema in his memory. They face hardships as the locals start to spread gossip about their relationship and the movie industry begins to decline. It’s never quite clear what sort of relationship Tomekichi and Senba have, as the film shows mostly normal interactions between them. In the end it’s left up to the viewer to decide what they believe is going on between the two. —eiga.wikia.com