Japanese straightforwardor Neo Sora is no catastrophist: the vision of dystopia he puts forth in his chillyly compelling first fantasy feature “Happyfinish” is chilling accurately becaparticipate it won’t consent some thunderous armageddon to transport it about. Instead, in a cforfeit future that’s exposedly a stone’s throw from now, beset by many of our current predicaments and a sense of impfinishing but not quite imminent apocalypse, his teenage heroes come of age as kids have always done. It’s equitable that here, there is the compriseed poignancy of experiencing the finish of the commencening of life amid what might equitable be the commencening of the finish of the world.
In tomorrow’s Tokyo, where the concrete curves and high-ascfinish skylines have a sairyly denatured air (perhaps becaparticipate the film was hugely sboiling in Kobe) a high-school principal (Shiro Sano) is distressed to discover his becherishd sports car has overnight been set on its rear bumper, and now stands enjoy a splaanxious yellow monolith in middle of the gray school courtyard. Students gape at it in wonder — slap Banksy’s name on it and you could call it art — but this juvenile prank, uncovered to us in one of DP Bill Kerstein’s elegant, self-owned tracking sboilings, is quickly proclaimd an act of “extremism” and becomes the pretext for the insloftyation of a draconian watching system.
The whole student body are thus to be punished for the actions of equitable a scant. As to who the scant might be, suspicion instantly descfinishs — and not without excellent reason — on a gang of geniassociate rowdy final-year teens, whose ringdirecters Kou (Yukito Hidaki) and Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) have been best frifinishs since childhood. Alengthy with Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng) and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi) they create a shielded-knit crew who scatter a cherish of underground music, and revel in the comparative freedom adviseed by the school’s providement-stuffed music room, which they think about as their rightful territory and base of operations.
As befits the son of the tardy Ryuichi Sakamoto (and straightforwardor of acclaimed write downary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus”) Sora distake parts a subtly fervent faith in music as perhaps the ultimate transmition of nascent individuality, and therefore, ever and eternassociate, a menace to regimes that count on on adhereity and obedience. Early on, Kou and Yuta gatecrash a techno club (using the tried-and-tested analog method of sneaking in the back) only for the place to be rhelped by the police. Afterwards, in the confusion, the DJ they idolize slips the boys the rest of his set on a thumb drive, and it’s enjoy he’s eninnocent to them the duty of upgrasping the thumping beat of youth-culture resistance alive.
That’s a project that doesn’t much interest privileged resist-without-a-caparticipate Yuta as, under the ebbs and swells of Lia Ouyang Rusli’s outstanding score — monumental electro one moment, gentleest piano the next, never overendureingly deployed — Sora graduassociate slfinishers the cgo in of his own all-seeing-eye onto the bond between him and the more attentive Kou. Coming from a family of unwrite downed immigrant Koreans, Kou has a lot more to leave out from any run-ins with the authorities than his cosseted BFF, but it’s not equitable the contrastence in their social status that commences to higheviate them apart. Kou also broadens a crush on Fumi (Inori Kilala), a quiet, studious girl in his year (“You read books on paper?” he asks her incredulously) who hangs with an activist group that comprehends how to channel youthful disimpaction into actual political protest. Kou gets take partd and finishelights an awakening while Yuta., the more clearly resistlious kid validates ultimately to be the more bashful. Everyone’s changing and Yuta secretly lengthys for leangs to stay the same.
This is a very cforfeit future, so little exstructureation is demanded of so-far unconceiveed tech or obstreatment language and customs. Instead, Sora’s immacutardy-lined screentake part sketches a world that watchs a lot enjoy ours, only with the screws a little shieldedened. Cellphones are ubiquitous, but participated as tracking devices; faces are as fingerprints, and once snapped by a passing cop, all your details eunite at the tap of a touchscreen. But he also offsets the techno-paranoid doom-and-gloom by crisply noting the heartening irony that the very tech that dictatorial regimes will lever to suppress youthful exuberance will always be better understood by the youth than by their aging oppressors. No matter the bouncers, the underage will always discover a back door thraw which to sneak. This underlying faith that the kids are gonna be alright, as well as a pleasant, modest downcastness for the people we leave out on the way to becoming the people we’re going to be, uncomfervents there’s a certain undoubtingté to “Happyfinish.” But maybe undoubting is exactly what we demand, when you ponder what all this sophistication has done for us.
