Shinji Sōmai: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is proud to honor the legacy of Japanese filmmaker Shinji Sōmai with a retrospective consisting of Sōmai’s four most quintessential films. Having made only thirteen films before his untimely death, Sōmai has nonetheless left an enduring impact on Japanese cinema, with prominent contemporary filmmakers, such as Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, citing him as a vital influence on their bodies of work. Sōmai’s filmography has remained elusive to international audiences for decades – until now, as the overlooked auteur’s coming-of-age classic, MOVING, inaugurates the American Cinematheque’s retrospective with its exquisite 4K restoration.

A recurring theme across Sōmai’s filmography is the subversion of prevailing notions about what a teenager is and their purported role in society. Deemed the master of the long take, the filmmaker’s stylistic trademark captures the evolving physicality and essence of the alienated adolescents ubiquitous throughout his oeuvre. He lends his lonesome, youthful characters a compassionate sense of understanding and humanity that is seldom rendered to such a degree, which is especially conspicuous in his anarchic road film, P.P. RIDER. Its high school aged main characters become increasingly disillusioned by the incompetent adults in their life as they venture out to save their class bully from the Yakuza, forcing the protagonists to grapple with the inherent absurdity of adulthood.

Sōmai’s transgressive second feature, SAILOR SUIT AND MACHINE GUN, centers around a teenage schoolgirl, who reluctantly inherits her father’s waning Yakuza clan. As naive Izumi is dragged into a gang war, exhibited through meticulous choreography and the aforementioned immersive long takes, the audience is submerged in a vigorous indictment of classic power dynamics. The ephemerality of adolescence and innocence is once again explored in TYPHOON CLUB, set against the backdrop of a small town devastated by a vicious typhoon and the group of junior high students trapped at school amidst the natural disaster. Sōmai delicately affords his viewers an unsentimental portrait of the realities that this band of teenagers must face under the looming prospect of catastrophe.