Japanese director Naomi Kawase’s rambling rite-of-passage tale opens with a raging sea from which the tattooed body of a drowned man emerges; an accident or a crime? In the wake of this death, our attention turns to two teenagers standing uncertainly upon the shores of adulthood. Kyôko (Jun Yoshinaga) is the strong spirit who plunges into the ocean in her school clothes; Kaito (Nijirô Murakami) is a withdrawn boy who shuns the sea for fear of its “stickiness”. Both are dealing with separation anxieties about their mothers – hers is dying, his is “lecherous” – and both are gradually falling in love. This is a world in which a deathbed scene becomes a communal dance, and approaching storms are richly imbued with pathetic fallacy. At times it’s too schematic for its own good, but there’s a musical quality which harmonises the script’s rockier edges, and the use of diegetic song is powerful and engaging. Scenes of cruel slaughter have been recut in accordance with the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act, Kawase’s harmonious vision sadly failing to extend to the welfare of goats.
