‘Happyend’: Venice Review

Dir. Neo Sora. Japan/USA 2024. 113mins

Oddly languid for a movie about youth unrest, Happyend is a low-key Japanese drama about friendship, revolt and standing as much as the surveillance state. “The programs that outline individuals are crumbling in Japan,” opening titles notify us at first of Neo Sora’s characteristic, which payments itself as a “story of the close to future.” Invariably, that signifies that we’re actually watching a thinly-disguised story of at present, however this depiction of younger individuals dealing with up towards faculty and state authoritarianism lacks a sure urgency, regardless of its manifest intelligence and craft.

A crisp and understated piece

That is the primary fiction characteristic from American writer-director Sora following Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, his much-praised 2023 documentary about his late father. Extra a reverie than a stark future-shock assertion, Happyend is a promising reasonably than a daring arrival, however ought to entice consideration following its debut in Venice’s Horizons sidebar. It would launch in Japan on October 5 by way of Bitter Finish, and Metrograph Photos have acquired North American rights.

Whereas the movie was largely shot in Kobe, the setting is Tokyo within the close to future, the town menaced by the prospect of imminent earthquakes. The federal government is utilizing this case, invoking the matter of public security, to crack down on opposition in a method that many voters regard as opening the door to tyranny. Amongst these whose non-conformist behaviour will come below scrutiny are a bunch of high-school associates first seen sneaking their method right into a techno membership earlier than it’s raided by police; a USB stick handed to them by the resident muscular DJ will turn into a symbolic torch of freedom for them to hold. The group contains two boys, techno fan Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yutiko Hidaka) – the latter of Korean parentage, which signifies that his household doesn’t have full citizenship rights on this markedly xenophobic future Japan.

After a spectacular prank is performed in school involving the principal’s new automotive, new facial recognition surveillance gear is put in that mechanically penalises college students with factors, resulting in absurd and arbitrary punishments. After one group of scholars ges in bother for becoming a member of an anti-authority protest, one other raises the ante by occupying the workplace of the more and more irascible and ineffectual principal (an impressively testy efficiency from veteran actor Shiro Sano). The scene by which the protesters refuse the pinnacle’s determined provide of sushi is among the extra taut, efficient moments in a movie that, regardless of the theme, is hampered by an general really feel of narrative inertia. 

There are additionally moments of brisk comedian absurdity, some coming from class joker Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), whereas a working gag – by which college students successfully ‘dub’ one another’s personal dialogue from a distance – has its personal appeal. By and enormous, although, the social remark is considerably diluted reasonably than strengthened by the movie’s tender, brooding consideration to character and to the scholars’ varied shades of juvenile melancholy – notably alluding to an unarticulated attraction between male associates Yuta and Kou

In execution, nonetheless, Happyend is a crisp and understated piece, with Invoice Kirstein’s cinematography benefiting from nocturnal cityscapes and of sterile empty areas within the faculty lecture rooms and corridors. And the charismatic younger solid – whereas unconvincingly a bit heavy on the pop star appears to be like – brings a full of life, impromptu-feeling natural vitality. A delicate, piano-based rating by Lia Ouyang Rusli carries its personal echoes of Sakamoto stateliness, not over-reverentially however with grace.