Presented in selection Un certain regard at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, My Sunshine is the second film by Hiroshi Okuyama, the young Japanese director who stood out in 2019 with Jesus, a story of friendship between a 10 year old child and Christ. The movie releases in theaters on Wednesday, December 25.
This time the director tells the story of a dreamy, shy and stuttering boy. Takuya lives on the island of Hokkaido. In winter, while his hockey friends, driven by the spirit of competition, rush onto the ice without hesitation, Takuya, his arms swinging and his stick dragging, lets himself be absorbed by the graceful movements of Sakura, a young skater, who tirelessly performs his sequences under the distracted eye of his coach, Arakawa. The latter, touched by Takuya's clumsy attempts to imitate Sakura, decides to take the young boy under his wing.
He suggests that he and his official student prepare for a duo competition. The two children get involved in the game. Takuya progresses quickly and flourishes throughout this training.s which take place in joy and good humor, until the day when Sakura discovers a facet of her trainer's private life which will upset the rest of the adventure…
With this new feature film, Hiroshi Okuyama continues to explore the world of childhood. Listening to your own desires, finding your way, ignoring the views of others, that's what Takuya experiences, sometimes in pain, but above all in joy, during this enchanted parenthesis. Once again, Hiroshi Okuyama highlights the virtues of friendship, here that which binds the boy and his coach, but also that which is woven between the two children, tinged with budding love. Feelings that are not expressed through words, but through looks, silences, gestures that the camera captures in a very organic way.
My Sunshine accompanies the movement of time. The plot unfolds over the course of a winter, something comes to life then dies at the same time as the snow disappears, only to be reborn with the appearance of the first signs of spring. Something from childhood is dead, but other precious things will blossom, acquired for life.
This game about the time of the seasons wonderfully represents this delicate passage from childhood to adolescence, and the path towards maturity on which it is so important to meet adults capable of setting markers to accompany the path towards oneself- even. The acceptance of difference in Japanese society is evoked in the background, with a touch of melancholy, without being emphasized, leaving the viewer free to form their opinion.
The very careful work of sound and light gives the film a particular, almost dreamlike shine, which fits perfectly with this age marked by the confusion of feelings, doubt, but also the age of all possibilities.
The director plays with a format, with a grain, with a texture of the image, which translate the landscapes of childhood. He works on contrasts, juggles with changes in focal length, with light, which sometimes invades the screen to the point of burning part of the image. He thus draws the inner universe, the feelings and sensations of a child apart, Takuya locked in his world, who little by little opens up to life by skating with grace, in symbiosis with his partner, in confidence under the kind eye of his trainer.
The young Japanese director (he is not yet 30 years old), in addition to confirming his talent for finding and directing child actors – here with a duo of young actors of great accuracy – affirms a singular cinematographic style full of promise .
Genre : Drama
Director: Hiroshi Okuyama
Actors: Sosuke Ikematsu, Keitatsu Koshiyama, Kiara Nakanishi
Pays : France, Japan
Duration : 1h30
Sortie : December 25, 2024
Distributer : Art House
Synopsis : On the island of Hokkaido, winter is hockey season for boys. Takuya, for his part, is more captivated by Sakura, who has just arrived from Tokyo, who is rehearsing figure skating sequences. He clumsily tries to imitate her, so much so that Sakura's coach, touched by his efforts, decides to train them as a duo for an upcoming competition… As winter progresses, harmony settles between them despite their differences. But the first snows melt and spring arrives, inevitably.
