What's in a name? On one level, it's how you identify yourself to yourself (as in dorky name, dorky self-image). On another, it's your social calling card, your link to family, going back generations (or not, if an ancestor decided to exchange one name for another).

The hero of "The Name," Akihiro Toda's engaging multilayered drama, has abandoned all that. Living in a crumbling old house in the countryside and working as a laborer at a recycling plant, he is Masao Nakamura (Kanji Tsuda), but, at certain times and places, he goes by other, fake names.

Then, just as the plant boss gets wise to his chicanery and is about to fire him, a teenage girl with a knowing grin pops up out of nowhere, announces herself as his daughter and covers for his lies. Crisis momentarily averted, but Masao has no idea who his schoolgirl savior really is (and she, for reasons of her own, is not about to tell him). Instead of going back to wherever she came from, she blithely inserts herself into his life.