It tells the story of events in a village over the course of a summer, the turning point of which is a summer festival. The protagonists and stories in the movie keep changing, so there is no fixed storyline.
Sosuke is a middle school student in a small, sleepy artists’ village by the sea, in a world that could not be more ordinary or surreal. Everyone knows each other from an early age, there is a familiarity and sometimes naivety to everyday life.
Then there is a trickster who comes to the village and sells poor quality Japanese knives with great charm and an impressive demonstration to the housewives living there, including Sosuke’s mother. When she doesn’t even manage to cut a piece of tofu with the knife, it flies out of the window and seems to hit a cat, which appears again and again throughout the movie.
Another story revolves around the somewhat quirky girlfriend of the aforementioned knife seller, who falls more and more in love with the village. With quite childlike enthusiasm, she then takes part in the summer festival, the highlight of which is a silent dance. Here, all the participants have to walk along the street without talking or laughing, while a quiet voice in the background repeatedly explains the rules and thus basically permanently interrupts the silence. The silent dance consists of a rather graceful movement, which, however, is constantly repeated in its movements.
Sosuke is now busy with various art projects for the school, some of which he would like to present at a school event afterwards. There, his talent for art is noticed by an art lover who has been observing Sosuke for some time. He receives a special commission from him for a sculpture, for which he also wants to pay Sosuke. An old Japanese painting, which is covered in cat paws in the course of the film, serves as the model.
Towards the end of the summer, mysterious animals attract the attention of the village. They have hidden in a large bush and are extremely agile. When the villagers and some news reporters try to catch them, the creatures jump from branch to branch very quickly with loud quacks and so they remain a mystery as no one can catch them.
Another storyline revolves around a report about a geriatric nurse who has apparently found a ground-breaking method of curing people suffering from senile dementia. However, a schoolgirl who writes for a school newspaper finds this extremely strange and therefore begins to investigate, uncovering questionable practices.
Another protagonist is Sosuke’s aunt Shizuka, who comes back to the village from the big city purely for work. She has the task of looking for artists who have borrowed a large sum of money and one is said to have settled in the village. Shizuka also meets one of her childhood friends. This friend in turn works as a real estate agent and has recently fallen in love with the artist she was looking for when she arranged the apartment for him. As the search for the artist continues, Shizuka is given a special bird whistle, which has the special ability to produce beautiful bird calls, but only when a real artist uses it.
Conclusion:
The movie left me and my companions with quite a few question marks. At the beginning, it seemed as if we were being presented with a light, colorful and humorous Japanese film, but as the story progressed, everything became more and more convoluted and, in the end, completely tied up in knots. Some storylines continued, some simply ended. New characters were added again and again, while some remained. It’s as if the script had been thrown into a blender once and the result was then made into a movie without further ado. As a result, it becomes increasingly exhausting and tiring to follow the movie and understand its goal.
The Q&A was also quite strange. The only useful information I was able to take away was that this movie is based on a manga. However, I haven’t had such “confused” manga in my hands before. Perhaps the manga was simply printed in European form and therefore the wrong way round for the Japanese (Japanese read manga from back to front)?
What the film was able to inspire the Generation kplus team for this film in the end remains a bit of a mystery to me and so it is probably a good candidate for the children’s jury, which is known for giving the most bizarre films a Crystal Bear.
Actors:
Konosuke Harada (Sosuke Minami)
Kumiko Aso (Sumiko Minami)
Kengo Kora (Takaoka)
Erika Karata (Yoko)
Koharu Sugawara (Meg)
Nobuhiro Suwa (Herr A.)
Jun Murakami (Ken)
Ayame Goriki (Risako)
Kankuro Kudo (Goro)
Maki Sakai (Shizuka)
Director:
Satoko Yokohama
More about the movie:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/2025/programme/202506669.html
