a film by Shunji Iwai
Uzuki Nireno is a young Japanese girl who is leaving her home in the northern countryside of Hokkaido to go to the college of her choice at Musashino University in western Tokyo. She has just boarded the train that will take her away from everything familiar to her. Her family stand on the platform waving goodbye, the doors close and the train pulls out of the station. Uzuki now enters a new world full of possibility, with great expectation and some trepidation.
On arrival in Tokyo she makes her way to the empty apartment that will be her home. As she explores its rooms and lies down on the floor, its internal bleakness emphasises her isolation in a new environment which she must now make her own. At this moment it is contrasted with the beauty outdoors of the bustling tree-lined streets that surround the apartment building, where Spring sakura blossoms now fall like the snowflakes she left behind in Hokkaido. It is April, the start of the academic year and of new beginnings. Soon the removals team arrive and fill her rooms with packing cases and pieces of furniture, bringing a sudden but necessary chaos into her new living space. Uzuki begins the task of unpacking and then goes out to explore her neighbourhood.
Being very shy and a little introverted, at first Uzuki is very insecure and nervous about her new situation. Everything appears so unfamiliar and she finds herself making all the wrong choices when trying to both adapt and to be herself. At college, her self-introduction in class goes badly and she is disappointed at her lack of social skills. Whilst it is really of little importance to her classmates, Uzuki is crushed.
In the refectory she is approached by an austere and rather pushy girl, Saeko, who wants to enrol her in the fly-fishing club. Desperately wanting to make new friends and not wishing to refuse the first offer of friendship, she agrees to try it, despite having no real interest in the sport. Just as things appear to be going well, her lack of pop-culture knowledge makes it difficult for her to communicate with the other members, and she later discovers that Saeko's enthusiasm to enrol her was simply due to the new reels being awarded to members for recruiting friends. Uzuki also endures several unwanted approaches from men, first at a cinema when watching a samurai classic, and later from a senior student at the fishing club when he attaches a hook to the front of her cardigan.
But in between her attempts to socialise with her fellow students, she makes several visits to a bookshop and gradually her singular hope and purpose, the very reason she has chosen to study at Musashino, is revealed to us. When she was in high school she fell in love with a boy named Yamazaki, a year above her. Too shy ever to approach him, Uzuki had kept secret her feelings for him, but when she discovered he was studying at the university and working in a bookshop, she knew at once what she must do. On each visit to the bookshop she makes disguised enquiries about opening and closing times in order to establish when Yamazaki will next be working in the shop. Finally her chance comes and she orchestrates an opportunity to get his attention but he responds to her only as a customer. Just as she is beginning to despair, he recognises her from high school and begins asking her all the questions about herself that she has been longing to answer.
As she leaves the shop, a downpour begins and Yamazaki offers her an umbrella from several that have been left behind by customers. At first she refuses and leaves, but having had time to think about it while on the steps of the art gallery, she returns to the bookshop to accept his offer. Uzuki and Yamazaki stand outside in the rain each sheltering under an umbrella and her moment arrives when she asks him if he is still in a band, adding that he was famous. While Yamazaki dismisses it by asking "I was?", Uzuki replies with such sincerity, "With me". As the emotional tension rises during their exchange in the torrential rainstorm, Uzuki at last makes her declaration of love, and seeing that it has been understood and accepted, the magic of first love begins to unfold.
Capturing a few moments in the life of a girl who is not only changing her outward surroundings but also following her inward desires, this gentle, engaging and very beautiful story touches us with its portrayal of the fragile, transitory moments we have all known.
No comments:
Post a Comment