In 2000, Riko Narumi made her first appearance on TV at age 7. She has worked steadily in both television and film ever since, and has 24 entries in her filmography, ranging from the drama "Shindo"(2007), where she played a troubled teen piano prodigy, to quirky comedy "Seaside Motel" (2011), in which she became the pouty girlfriend of a degenerate gambler. Narumi, however, has become better known for her mature-for-their-age characters who gaze out at the world with skeptical, mysterious eyes.

In her latest film, Hitoshi Yazaki's "A Cappella" ("Mubanso"), Narumi plays a Sendai high school girl who is serious and sweetly naive — an ideal Narumi role. But when I met her in a small rental office in Shibuya to talk about the film, she was — unlike her introverted adolescent character — the complete adult professional, if one sniffling from a bad cold. Watching her try to look interested and engaged when she was probably longing for hot tea and a warm futon, I felt all my critical quibbles about the film disappear into the ether.