少女は卒業しない 「Shoujo wa Sotsugyou Shinai」
Release Date: February 23rd, 2023
Available to Stream Here: SAKKA
Duration: 120 mins.
Director: Shun Nakagawa
Writer: Shun Nakagawa (Screenplay), Ryo Asai (Original Stories)
Starring: Yuumi Kawai, Rina Ono, Rina Komiyama, Tomo Nakai, Kisetsu Fujiwara, Airu Kubozuka,
Website Twitter: @shoujo_sotsugyo IMDB
There are just two days to go before the senior students at Shimada High School, in Yamanashi Prefecture, graduate. As if to underline the ending of their adolescent world, the high school is set to be knocked down the day after their graduation ceremony. This is the backdrop for Shun Nakagawa’s debut feature Sayonara, Girls., an understated but very intimate coming-of-age ensemble drama made poignant by its sense for capturing goodbyes.
The most to do with the upcoming graduation ceremony is Kyoko (Rina Komiyama), the music club leader. She is managing the battle between bands eager to get the last slot at the final school concert. Her childhood friend aims to perform but his band is on the verge of breaking up. Lurking in the library with less to do is loner Shiori (Tomo Nakai). She quietly seeks to overcome her shyness by getting the advice of the departing school librarian whom she has a faint crush on. Basketballer Yuki (Rina Ono), with her firecracker humour, has her sights set on becoming a psychologist in Tokyo but first has to navigate the emotions of the boyfriend she will leave behind. Then there is Manami (Yuumi Kawai), a gifted cook who intends to go on to a food technical college but first has to deliver the school’s farewell speech. She wrestles with a past trauma hindering her speech and wishes she could speak about it with her boyfriend before they part ways.
In terms of dramatic stakes this reads like small-scale stuff at the outset but by the end the film has picked up enough emotional freight to be immensely moving. That written, the story always feels light.
The lightness comes in how the screenplay adopts a multiple thread-like structure that comes from the way Shun Nakagawa adapted the source material for his screenplay, a series of seven short stories that were written by Ryo Asai (writer of The Kirishima Thing). With grace, his film grants each girl’s story almost equal weight as they introduce a constellations of characters as the two days pass in chronological order. Aside from two flashbacks whose forceful interruptions and import only become clear at the farewell speech, Nakagawa cuts between present-tense storylines smoothly so that it feels like the film’s pacing is gentle and sleek and the atmosphere is unbroken as individual little dramas progress concurrently.
The tone/atmosphere initially feels relaxed as a steady camera (a mixture of static shots and the occasional dolly/pans for bike rides) and unfussy editing quietly dip in and out of scenes. This unfussiness creates clear conveyance of detail and drama do audiences cannot miss, say, repeating visual motifs that build an emotional map connecting people to place. The purchasing of a book to replace an older library edition, the avoidance of the gaze of a significant other, and people going somewhere empty to sing or play ball. Details slowly accumulate into something bigger and gain a deeper emotional resonance so the film’s tone gains weight as it becomes clearer and clearer how Kyoko, Shiori, Yuki, and Manami have underlying dramas and desires they need to reconcile on that final day before they can move on, all related to saying goodbye to some significant other.
It isn’t just information though as Nakagawa creates moments of poetic beauty that feel like memories that will be cherished forever. The scene of Manami on the school roof watching her surroundings and classmates. In the evening sunset, Kyoko riding pillion on her friend’s bicycle only to want a photograph under cherry blossoms. They convey how the mundane world can carry something special and there is the obvious symbolism of cherry blossoms and the bloom of young adulthoods and brief time spent together.
It is, however, pretty understated but effective, as are the performances as the cast act naturalistically and feel closer to real teens with troubling issues of varying delicacy and different levels of intimacy with others. Rina Ono as Yuki breaking into infectious laughter that sets her best friend off has the ring of authenticity while Tomo Nakai is just the right side of sad to portray Shiori as mousy, often lingering in the library with wistful gazes, without being pathetic. Yuumi Kawai is stellar as Manami throughout the film. The de facto lead, she matches the film’s pace and gradually peels back layers of her character’s emotional shell before her speech summarises perfectly how important her high school time was and how it has fostered a sense of community that she has to leave but does so with some hopes to carry her forward.
A sense of character also applies to the school itself, a place that feels like an important world that is closing as once-lively rooms empty out and spaces shut down. This reaches its crescendo during the farewell speech Manami gives which is accompanied by images of the characters bathed in the glow of sunset of the second and final day, looking back at significant people and places. An atmosphere of absence is felt in empty classrooms with bare bookshelves and a gym where things are packed away and a solitary school jacket lies on the floor as a final goodbye, the sort to make an audience shed tears, is said.
Sayonara, Girls. is only two hours long but Nakagawa and his team feel they have created years of intimate connections and as people walk away from all they have known, only to give one last look at each other – those moments of absence and departure really strike a chord that the heart is moved. It is shot in a neatly understated way as the story is deftly told in in its construction. Light on melodramatics and contrivances of something like the aforementioned Kirishima Thing, it feels real that realism is where it strikes the emotions along through that constant sense of saying farewell and through acting that feels like it conveys an organic bond between people. While it may take time for the full import of the stories to be revealed the conclusion ends up being a knock out.
Sayonara, Girls. will be available to stream on SAKKA in North America, Europe, and Oceania from September 12.
Shun Nakagawa’s award-winning short film Kalanchoe will also be available to stream soon – stay tuned for a review!
This one will be worldwide, excluding Japan. People will be able to stream it for free from September 20th to the 30th. After that, Kalanchoe will be available on SAKKA for a fee.