Movie theater. Should you go see “My Sunshine”, the new film by Japanese director Hiroshi Okuyama?

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Hiroshi Okuyama, this Japanese not even thirty years old, at the same time filmmaker, director of photography, screenwriter and editor, offers us for these holidays a space of dazzling beauty and a refreshing freshness.

Direction the island of Hokkaido, in the north of Japan

Few characters to tell us this intimate adventure, full of silences, taking us by the hand to integrate us into a narrative process of which we will hold the keys to the many borders. Here we are on the island of Hokkaido, in the north of Japan. It’s winter. The boys gave up baseball to take up ice hockey.

One of them, Takuya, a very young teenager, really doesn’t shine in these sports which he practices somewhat by social convention. On the other hand, he is captivated by the grace and elegance of Sakura, a young girl his age, a figure skater who trains on the neighboring ice rink. In secret, he tries to reproduce the ultra-complicated and technical figures that she succeeds with flying colors. In vain.

But her efforts did not escape Sakura’s trainer, Arakawa. Moved by the kid’s tenacity, he offers to train him with the aim of joining him with Sakura for a couples competition. They will even go skating together on a frozen lake, a moment of pictorial beauty that echoes the most beautiful prints. Takuya is making huge progress. The preselection is for tomorrow… The tale ends there. The societal reality of today’s Japan will hamper this great adventure. Indeed, Sakura, at first jealous of her coach’s attention to her new student, will also discover that her coach is homosexual. In contemporary Japan, the sentence is immediate…

A breathtakingly beautiful film

In this film, let us repeat, of breathtaking beauty, the filmmaker talks to us about his childhood but also about his country, a country corseted in traditions that are certainly several thousand years old but seeming to turn its back on the passing of time. Arakawa is a former world champion in pairs skating and with the arrival of Takuya, it is a duty of transmission that pushes him to take care of the young boy. Through this extremely difficult discipline, a whole learning process takes place which does not only concern skating of course. Sousuke Ikematsu is a star in the Land of the Rising Sun. Here he plays Arakawa, a caring coach, of deep humanity and gentleness. The two (authentic) young skaters are neophytes when it comes to cinema. However, their mutual emotions are capable of melting the ice. Where to make her squeal… Keitatsu Koshiyama (Takuya) and Kiara Nakanishi (Sakura) are the portraits of a youth steeped in willpower in pursuit of her dreams.

One word: magnificent!

Robert Pénavayre

My Sunshine, un film de Hiroshi Okuyama

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