Noriko Eguchi is such a striking presence, it’s frustrating that Japanese filmmakers have been so reluctant to give her more screen time. In the 20 years since her breakout performance in Yuki Tanada’s “Moon and Cherry” (2004), the actress has mostly had to content herself with colorful supporting roles in movies whose ostensible stars were altogether less memorable.

Maybe she’s changed her agent, but Eguchi is suddenly having a bit of a moment. Yukihiro Morigaki’s “Rude to Love” is the third film in which she’s starred this year, after a more than decade-long drought. And whereas the other two — Kazuhiro Nakamura’s “Amalock” and Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s “To Mom, With Love” — were relatively lightweight affairs, this gives her a role that’s equal to her talents.

Fittingly, she plays a character who’s underappreciated. Momoko, a 41-year-old homemaker, is the kind of person who normally fades into the background of suburbia. Aside from teaching occasional classes in soap making, hers is a life of small obsessions: keeping the local garbage collection point tidy, fretting about the whereabouts of a favored stray cat, or cooing over her latest porcelain purchase.