There is a wonderful charm and a sensuous languor in this Japanese movie from Kôji Fukada. Guided by the spirit of Eric Rohmer, it’s a sweet summer breeze of a film. And there’s another influence: Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, who himself has Rohmer in his creative DNA, and who may have inspired the more worldly and subversive elements in Au Revoir L’Été. Just as in Rohmer, Fukada has young people hanging out on the beach in swimming costumes: the romance and eroticism being thus hidden in plain sight. Sakuko (Fumi Nikaidô) is an 18-year-old who has flunked her college entrance exams and come to the seaside to stay with her aunt Mikie (Mayu Tsuruta), supposedly to study for retakes. Instead, she gets involved in a veritable local soap-opera of emotional disquiet. Mikie’s former boyfriend, Ukichi (Kanji Furutachi), is a charming if louche figure who manages a “love hotel” where he employs his nephew, a refugee from the Fukushima disaster. This is Takashi (Taiga), with whom Sakuko begins to fall in love, just as she realises he is attracted to someone else. Meanwhile, Ukichi’s student daughter, Tatsuko (Kiki Sugino), is attracted to a visiting married academic (Tadashi Otake) who is himself having an affair with Mikie. All this unfolds naturally, almost casually, and yet without cynicism or rancour. The final closeness of Sakuko and Takashi, and in fact of Sakuko and Mikie, too, are very touching. What a lovely film.
