J Paul Johnson
Opening in North American theaters this week after appearing at Cannes and dozens of other prestigious festivals over the past year, writer-director Hiroshi Okuyama’s My Sunshine (Boku no Ohisama) is a lovely, lively depiction of young love—or at least, of youthful (mis)understandings of what love might be, or mean. Shot in a splendid soft-hued, gauzy focused reverie, Okuyama’s sweet bildungsroman depicts a lilting, lively variation on the old boy-meets, boy-gets, boy-loses girl narrative.
On the snowy Japanese island of Hokkaido, young Takuya (a perfectly cast Keitatsu Koshiyama) is the kind of boy who surely must always be last to be picked. At baseball, he’s lost in the clouds as fly balls sail past him, nearly oblivious to baserunners and obligations. Months later, during hockey season, he’s equally inept at the icy sport. Consigned to goalie as a penalty of sorts, Takuya can only stand defenselessly as the target in front of the net, where pucks strike him mercilessly in the stomach or throat. Off the ice and in social situations, his slight stammer has the local schoolgirls snickering at him. Somehow, young Takuya remains unperturbed, gliding through each day’s indignities seemingly unaffected.
At local ice rink his hockey team shares with practicing figure skaters, Takuya becomes transfixed when he sees a rising star from Tokyo named Sakura (an equally perfectly cast Keitatsu Koshiyama). Sakura is completely oblivious to Takuya’s rapt attention, but her coach, Arakawa (Sôsuke Ikematsu), is not: he sees in Takuya the promise no one else could. And so he pairs the two together with the goal of making them a competitive ice-dancing duo.
Takuya could hardly be happier with this turn of events and thrives under Arakawa’s tutelage, swiftly becoming a competent skater; and Sakura, although initially hesitant to share her coach’s time and attention, begins to realize that this budding partnership might help her realize her competitive dreams. All three grow closer and closer, forming a deep bond through their shared love of sport, one that Okuyama celebrates with a long montage of the three practicing, dancing, and cavorting giddily to a nearly-unheard-of-yet-still-sublime Zombies cover of the old Little Anthony Imperials chestnut “I Think I’m Goin’ Out of My Head.” Coming precisely at the film’s midpoint, the scene, framed in the film’s narrow 1.33:1 aspect ratio and in the crisp cold of Hokkaido’s winter, evokes all the feels of young love and affection between the two athletes and their dedicated coach.
And yet for all its giddiness the scene runs just a little long, long enough to make one wonder what will go wrong. Surely, their growing bond will somehow suffer the pangs of adolescence, and soon enough, it does just that. Sakura, who has been shown to pine ever so slightly for her coach’s attention and praise, begins to harbor some jealousy when she witnesses Takuya and Arakawa’s easygoing repartee and horseplay, the kind of gentle homosocial bonding between young males once common before fears of grooming and pedophilia became more abject.
Okuyama’s direction is masterful at charting these developments primarily with eyeline glances and point of view shots. My Sunshine is a film of few words but many emotions, most of them conveyed through the careful editing and cinematography. When Sakura, feeling just-so-slightly ignored, voices her suspicions of Arakawa’s motives, she unknowingly (or, perhaps knowingly) sets into motion a new set of events that will forever change each of the three’s futures. The film’s second half may seem a little less sure of itself than its first, but it’s to Okuyama’s credit that he avoids melodramatic climaxes or simplistic resolutions. For his protagonists, life goes on… just differently.
This is probably enough said about the plot: I’ll gladly recommend My Sunshine to anyone with the opportunity to see it. Its direction and cinematography are nonpareil, its lead actors all excellent, the storyline engaging yet complex, and, above all, Okuyama’s film both lovingly and realistically depicts the flawed loves and perspectives of adolescence with a bracing, lively, and charming presentation. It’s true that at its core the boy, Takura, meets the girl, Sakura, gets the girl (sort of), and loses the girl, but My Sunshine does far, far more than just that.
