I gotta admit, I'm a sucker for these sincere portraits of young Japanesse with more attention to moving cinematics accompanied by a moving piano score rather than a traditional Hollywood-esque plot. I just love this stuff, and Shunji Iwai delivered this perfectly in his film "April Story"(His film "Hana and Alice" looks to deliver the same, with a more complex plot).
April Story's plot centers around high school graduate Nireko, who moves from the chilly northern island of Hokkaido to the Tokyo metropolis to begin living alone as a university student. The beautiful first scene is her boarding the train with her family seeing her off on her journey, shot in her perspective. The film follows our protagonist's everyday life, mostly adjusting to living alone, and with time explains her real reasons for coming to the city.
Clocking in at just minutes over an hour, April Story doesn't carry a lot of baggage in the content category. The plot isn't abound with excitement and the simple resolution presented at the end of the film isn't a surprise either. However, the real charm in this film is how Iwai tells his story. Shot from an outsiders perspective, we are given no insight into Nireko's thoughts until the very end of the film. Through the rest of it, we can only interpret her thoughts through her actions, body language, and sparse utterances; there is no narration or asides done by Nireko to suggest to the audience what exactly she is thinking. The viewer is thus tasked with interpreting her character themselves, leaving many open ended interpretations for Nireko as if she were someone we knew in real life. This tactic made the film's simple plot that much more rewarding. The film is very Japanese, though, so for someone not familiar with the nuances of Japanese culture, some of the actions and speech styles of the character may come off as confusing.
Iwai's clever approach to this short film delivers something truly special. At first glance it may just be a short film about a young girl in love, but there is a lot more, and the film is more about experiencing the content itself than anything else. For those looking for a beautiful portrait of young love with a keen eye to film making, don't miss April Story: it's not a particularly new film but it still hasn't lost it's touch.
~hideki~
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