カランコエの花 「Karankoe no Hana」
Running Time: 39 mins.
Release Date: July 17th, 2017
Stream it at: SAKKA from September 20th
Director: Shun Nakagawa
Writer: Shun Nakagawa (Screenplay),
Starring: Mio Imada, Sho Kasamatsu, Chihiro Nagase, Arisa, Makoto Sudo, Haruna Hori,
Slight spoilers in this review
Kalanchoe is a medium-length film Shun Nakagawa made before Sayonara, Girls. which won the Grand Prix competition at the 2017 Rainbow Reel Tokyo, an international lesbian and gay film festival. It presents a different spin on a drama of a person being outed by initially showing it from the perspective of the group before showing it from the perspective of the individual. Within this drama is a lesson about the difficulties and importance of sincerely engaging with others and it is delivered without didacticism.
This idea of sincere engagement is embedded convincingly at a number of levels and is nuanced right from the get go.
The drama begins as a result of how a class of high school pupils react when their English teacher calls in sick and the school nurse acts as a substitute and gives an impromptu talk about sexual minorities to their class. It is the sort of cookie-cutter lesson on acceptance that might not seem out of the ordinary but, however well-intentioned, the thoughtlessness of its impact becomes apparent when mischief-makers reason out that it was their class alone that got the talk and so someone in their group is queer.
Rumours spread as the instigators, showing the sort of maliciousness exhibited by teens hopped up on ignorance and hormones, relentlessly poke and prod teachers and fellow students alike for clues as to who is different – the “creep” as they put it – and the threat of someone being outed begins to arise.
Themes on acceptance of others with different identities grow all encompassing as students and teachers react in different ways to the swirl of suspicion, sometimes rationally and sometimes irrationally with little actions of distancing themselves from each other or offering clumsy allyship and it is here that Kalanchoe gains its emotional bite as these slices of social issues are next plugged into a pure love story which also demonstrates the difficulty in sincere engagement.
Our “in” into this intensifying drama is Tsukino 月乃 Ichinose (Mio Imada). She responds by trying to support classmates and talking to her mother about sexual minorities but is slow to realise that she is the object of affection for her queer classmate.
The viewer will be in no doubt as to who it is as, at the film’s midway point, there is a sequence involving Tsukino and a close friend who rides pillion on her bicycle. Said friend leans her head on Tsukino’s back and wraps her arms around her waist while the gentle dusk rays of the sun light their journey (a somewhat similar sequence is in Sayonara, Girls.) and talks about the bright red scrunchy holding Tsukino’s ponytail.
It is the stuff of romance, a familiar image from many a movie, and made more affecting by the naturalness and innocence of the two not being able to bridge the gap between meaning and understanding, especially while influenced by the atmosphere around them, all of which comes to a head with Tsukino’s late realisation of her friend’s predicament and an awkward defence she mounts which, through adroit imagery involving a chalkboard, erases her friend’s lesbian identity. There is a poignancy to this act of rejection that is made even more painful in the film’s credit sequence time slip to a week before when we hear the friend explain her feelings for Tsukino to the nurse, the catalyst for what we have seen. Her voice trembles with the sort of happiness that suggests “true love” – that sense that you will burst with happiness over the mere existence of that person.
Going back to the film’s title, it comes from a same-named red flower. A kalanchoe can mean eternal love or “I protect you” in flower language. The scrunchy Tsukino’s friend compliments is something we see at the start of the film by Tsukino’s mother. She says of its bright red colour that it evokes the image of the flower. The meaning only becomes clear for Tsukino when her mother explains it later in the film as does her realisation of the unspoken affection her queer classmate holds her in, but maybe too late.
While the lingering emotion left by the film is sadness, Nakagawa’s screenplay and his cast offer continually nuanced presentation of events and people – teachers keep trying, bullies do show remorse, people try to grow and it does feel like watching real people.
Most of the film revels in the rambunctious school lives of the characters. Shot within an actual school and with the participation of students, there is a sense of realism that the cast blend into such as moments with the brass band blasting out tunes, teens sharing food, strolling about together, pranking teachers to the laughter of others, and bashfully talking about love. Within these sequences, the film foreshadows the conflict as the class pranksters trick teachers into revealing truth and lies, delivers themes through Hana’s speech which identifies queer love as normal and the problems of prejudice. Gear changes and plots twists are masked by organic acting that conveys close kinship between characters, all caught by handheld camera and the immediacy that provides bolstered by dynamic composition so it feel like we are watching real teens and we learn more easily.
Ultimately, this film is about society. A school can be a metaphor for society in a movie and Kalanchoe works on this level, especially at a time when LDP politicians insult the LGBTQ community. Thus the meaning of the kalanchoe flower, with its meaning of love and protection goes beyond Tsukino and her mother. Tsukino and her friend. The film shows that classmates have a duty to protect and care for each other, that the teachers have a duty to protect their students, that a community has an obligation to protect its young, no matter who they are and Nakagawa’s writing and the cast sell the message that it is important to keep trying to understand and engage sincerely.
SAKKA, the online streaming service dedicated to showcasing Japanese films, has started hosting two Shun Nakagawa films this September.
Kalanchoe will be available to stream for free from September 20th to the 30th. After that, it will be available to stream on SAKKA for a fee worldwide, excluding Japan.
Sayonara, Girls., Nakagawa’s follow-up feature to Kalanchoe, started streaming in North America, Europe, and Oceania on September 12th. You can read my review here and an interview with director Nakagawa here. The interview makes a link to both his feature and short and how the film’s feature a similar sensibility.