‘Love Village’ is a warts-and-all take on the realities of middle-aged romance

[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for season three of “Love Village.”]

After 23 episodes of “Love Village,” you, too, may start to hum The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” with a swell of emotion whenever you catch sight of Mount Fuji. The 1980s hit is the musical leitmotif of the Netflix reality show’s third season, proving to be a poignant and versatile soundtrack for interpersonal dramas big and small.

On the surface, “Love Village” hasn’t changed its formula since it debuted in 2023. The show’s third season opens with eight participants meeting for the first time at a remote kominka (traditional Japanese home), this time in Shizuoka Prefecture at the foot of Japan’s most sacred mountain. Their goal? To cohabitate and engage in some light home renovation — their smartphones and devices confiscated — while looking for a life partner among the cohort.

But this season’s topics of discussion seem both weightier and more pragmatic than past runs — refreshingly realistic for a show whose premise is to help “older” adults (in this case, over the age of 35) find love.

Death, divorce, disease and discord shadow almost all of the contestants, their complicated backstories revealed in dribs and drabs. Yes, these are fully formed humans with diverse romantic resumes — and a handful of children, to boot.

By the final episode, a record five couples have gotten together and departed hand in hand for sunnier pastures.

The first pairing of the season materializes in the 12th episode when the mild-mannered Hakase (meaning “doctor,” as in PhD), a 50-year-old dentist and lung cancer survivor, leaves the village with Muko, a children’s care facility worker 12 years his junior — a triumph for the older man over Shikun, another potential suitor closer to Muko’s age with similar musical tastes. (All participants on the show go by pseudonyms.)

Another memorable character is the 59-year-old chatty retired flight attendant who calls herself Oyabun (“kingpin”). Despite her sunny exterior, Oyabun reveals that she struggled to raise her son after her husband died of liver cancer in his 30s. She, too, endured cancer and major gynecological surgeries as a single mother, and now is committed to finding someone to spend the rest of her days with.

In the final episode, Oyabun pairs up with Bamboo, 56, a silver-haired retired nuclear engineer. In one of the show’s most touching scenes, Bamboo and Oyabun pray at her husband’s grave in Niigata Prefecture after leaving the show as a couple.

“I want to keep both the dead and the living close to my heart throughout my life,” she says, breaking down in tears when Bamboo adds that he thinks of her husband as a companion for their travels around the country.

And then there’s Phakchi (from pakuchi, the Japanese word for “cilantro”), a salaryman turned massage therapist, and L, an interior designer with a fiery temperament, strange bedfellows who turn out to be well-matched in their childlike earnestness — despite being 61 and 44, respectively. The adolescence-coded dynamic between the two of them is at times cringeworthy, at times heartwarming for its emotional directness.

Phakchi instigates the most salacious conversation to ever take place on “Love Village” when he inquires among his housemates about their preferred sleeping arrangements in relationships. His boasts about the practical reasons for wanting separate beds are not fit to print here.

Meanwhile, L’s capricious behavior and emotional outbursts are given somber context when she finally opens up to Phakchi about the tragedy that upended her life more than two decades earlier: the death of her infant in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver.

This season is a stark reminder that love doesn’t exist in vacuum, and every person comes freighted with an invisible history that may not be what you think.

The whiplash from frivolity to dead-seriousness is sometimes a lot to process. But thankfully, in tandem with the romantic intrigues is commentary by the same two tarento (TV personalities) from previous seasons, Atsushi Tamura and the mononymous Becky. Their unfiltered reactions run the gamut from teary sympathy to flippant amusement, a delightful banter that feels like watching the show with old friends.

To be a reality-show contestant requires telegenic appeal and some degree of self-awareness. Even though “Love Village” is meticulously choreographed by its showrunners and production crew, the most memorable moments — and the beating heart of the series — come from the unscripted and unvarnished incidents when human foibles and yearnings are on full display.

In an aging society like Japan that still places a premium on heteronormative milestones, dating in middle age is seemingly just as fraught as choosing to remain single. The success of “Love Village” lies in its embrace of the vicissitudes of life and the unique emotional tapestry that every person brings with them into a new friendship or romance.

We contain multitudes, the show proudly proclaims. We can be loved in our entirety for all we have been, and all we have yet to become.