Japanese honestor Neo Sora is no catastrophist: the vision of dystopia he puts forth in his celderlyly compelling first fantasy feature “Happyfinish” is chilling exactly becaparticipate it won’t apshow some thunderous armageddon to convey it about. Instead, in a cforfeit future that’s nakedly 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 fair that here, there is the compriseed poignancy of experiencing the finish of the beginning of life amid what might fair be the beginning of the finish of the world.
In tomorrow’s Tokyo, where the concrete curves and high-ascend skylines have a sweightlessly denatured air (perhaps becaparticipate the film was hugely sboiling in Kobe) a high-school principal (Shiro Sano) is distressed to uncover his becherishd sports car has overnight been set on its rear bumper, and now stands appreciate a splaafraid 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 cultured, self-haveed tracking sboilings, is speedyly proclaimd an act of “extremism” and becomes the pretext for the insloftyation of a draconian observation system.
The whole student body are thus to be punished for the actions of fair a confineed. As to who the confineed might be, suspicion promptly descends — and not without excellent reason — on a gang of genipartner rowdy final-year teens, whose ringdirecters Kou (Yukito Hidaki) and Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) have been best frifinishs since childhood. Alengthened with Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng) and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi) they establish a safe-knit crew who split 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 procrastinateed Ryuichi Sakamoto (and honestor of acclaimed write downary “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus”) Sora distake parts a subtly fervent faith in music as perhaps the ultimate conveyion of nascent individuality, and therefore, ever and eternpartner, a danger to regimes that depend 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 appreciate he’s eninnocent to them the duty of upgrasping the thumping beat of youth-culture resistance ainhabit.
That’s a project that doesn’t much interest privileged defy-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 overtolerateingly deployed — Sora gradupartner leans the concentrate of his own all-seeing-eye onto the bond between him and the more ponderate 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 fair the contrastence in their social status that begins to trelieve them apart. Kou also enhuges a crush on Fumi (Inori Kilala), a hushed, studious girl in his year (“You read books on paper?” he asks her incredulously) who hangs with an activist group that understands how to channel youthful disimpaction into actual political protest. Kou gets comprised and endelights an awakening while Yuta., the more evidently defylious kid shows ultimately to be the more afraid. Everyone’s changing and Yuta secretly lengtheneds for leangs to stay the same.
This is a very cforfeit future, so little exscheduleation is needed of so-far unconceiveed tech or obstreatment language and customs. Instead, Sora’s spotless-lined screentake part sketches a world that sees a lot appreciate ours, only with the screws a little safeened. Cellphones are ubiquitous, but participated as tracking devices; faces are as fingerprints, and once snapped by a passing cop, all your details ecombine 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 sugary, basic sadness for the people we leave out on the way to becoming the people we’re going to be, unbenevolents there’s a brave innocentté to “Happyfinish.” But maybe innocent is exactly what we need, when you ponder what all this sophistication has done for us.
