Archive - 7th Five Flavours Film Festival

Happy-Go_Lucky

Natsu jikan no otonatachi
Japan 1997, 73’
subtitles: Polish and English
director: Tetsuya Nakashima
screenplay: Tetsuya Nakashima
cinematography: Masakazu Ato
music: Yôko Kanno
cast: Hidaka Yoshitomo, Nagi Noriko, Maki Ishikawa, Hiroko Taguchi, Rina Komuro
language: Japanese
colouration: colour

Awards and festivals

Bergamo Film Meeting 1999 - Silver Rosa Camuna

Film description

Takashi is 10 years old, has a vivid imagination, and many grave problems. He is pretty good at drawing, but he simply cannot do a back pullover around a horizontal bar, and has to practice it after school. His father spends his entire days looking through a window. Outside, school girls appear from time to time, teasing one of their friends. An elderly neighbor tries to talk the boy into kissing her, but he is more interested in a girl his age, even though she doesn't have breasts yet.

Nakashima's intimate debut is a story of a family, seen through the eyes of a child facing his first frustrations and the magical but terrifying adolescence. The director alludes to the classic Japanese social cinema, such as the works of Ozu or Naruse, but enriches it with some irony and surreal humor. This warm story begins as a banal, nostalgic family film, but soon becomes less conventional and moves towards an absurd grotesque, forecasting the eccentricity of Nakashima’s further works.

Jagoda Murczyńska

Tetsuya Nakashima

Born in 1959 in Fukuoka. He received numerous awards for his music videos, commercials, and series. Director and screenwriter. After the success of "Kamikaze Girls" and "Memories of Matsuko", he was proclaimed as one of the most original and influential Japanese filmmakers.

Selected filmography:

1997 Beztroskie lato / Natsu jikan no otonatachi / Happy-Go-Lucky
1988 Beautiful Sunday
2004 Kamikaze Girls / Shimotsuma monogatari / Kamikaze Girls
2004 Żywot Matsuko / Kiraware Matsuko no isshō / Memories of Matsuko
2008 Pako i magiczna księga / Pako to mahō no ehon / Paco and the Magic Book
2010 Wyznania / Kokuhaku / Confessions

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