Writer and Director: Neo Sora
In near-future Tokyo, where a predicted earthquake has allowed the government to increase its surveillance on its people, Yuta and Kou want to be DJs when they finish school. It sounds like Happyend will be a hip dystopian thriller, but it all ends up a bit Grange Hill.
Neo Sora’s film starts with the two friends sneaking into an illegal rave, 80s-style. With their white school shirts tucked into their back pockets, they pretend that they are barbacks and manage to slip through the back door. The music is blistering, and the beat drop invigorating. But they have little time to enjoy the sounds before the police turn up and break up the party.
Back at school, the principal’s fancy yellow car is somehow moved so it stands perpendicular to the ground. The principal asserts that the jape is an act of terrorism and brings in facial recognition technology, where the movements of the pupils are monitored constantly. If the students are caught doing anything wrong, they are penalised through a points system. If they garner enough points, their parents are informed. The school surveillance system acts as an easy metaphor for the Japanese Government’s emergency measures.
Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) isn’t really interested in the macro-politics: perhaps as a privileged Japanese young man, he doesn’t need to be. He lives in a fancy apartment, often alone, as his mother is abroad. However, the Korean Kou (Yukito Hidaka) is more affected by the government’s reactionary policies. As an immigrant, he won’t be allowed to vote in the future, and there’s talk of vigilante gangs attacking non-Japanese communities.
With the UK’s own current fear of immigrants, Happyend is surprisingly topical, but it’s a shame that writer/director Neo Sora, son of Ryuichi Sakamoto, chooses to examine the attacks on personal freedoms through the lens of the school, as it makes his film a little too juvenile for an older audience. And the antics of the yellow car are far less interesting than the drama we see unfold on the TV screen in the restaurant that Kou’s mother owns.
Of course, if this film encourages any of the younger generation to make a stand, then Happyend will have done its job, but there’s little sense of danger here. Only once, when a protester in the grip of riot police slams against a door, do we remember what is really at stake. However, Sora has done well to highlight how minorities suffer in times of national crises.
The concrete city, full of overpasses and empty plazas, not only shows the loneliness of urban life, but also that period between teenagehood and adulthood. Yuta and Kou are adrift, and it’s unclear whether involvement in political activism will save both of them. In fact, the beat drop never arrives.
Happyend is in UK and Irish cinemas from 19 September.
