May 17, 2008
Gentle Breeze in the Village
A nice, calm breeze
Gentle Breeze in the Village (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2007) takes place in a small town – the kind of town where there’s one of each utility service for everything: a grocery shop, a convenient store, a post office, and yes, a school. Eigth grader Soyo, the eldest one of them all, is mother hen to six children at work (they attend the same combined primary and junior high school), as well as play. The dynamics change once the new kid arrives in town: Hiromi, an attractive kid from Tokyo, has settled in the village, following the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. Soyo, at first, mistakens Hiromi’s street smarts as arrogance. In due’s time, the two mend patches and eventually take a liking to one another – with their puppy love match affirmed after a damsels-in-distress incident (Soyo trips and sprains her ankle on the train tracks, only to have Hiromi rescue her in the nick of time).
I'm sure anyone with a low tolerance for schmaltz would approach Gentle Breeze with some measure of caution. But take the synopsis, I just paraphrased, with a grain of salt. Because if anything, Gentle Breeze is exemplary of how fine execution can overcome any possible shortcoming. Having seen my share of coming-of-age clunkers –the Taiwanese film Eternal Summer (Leste Chen, 2006) comes to mind, Gentle Breeze somehow manages to sidestep such mistakes.
Much credit should be given to director Nobuhiro Yamashita (Linda Linda Linda), who renders the kids innocent but not dumb; extracts sweetness from slice of life moments, only to infuse it with some off-kilter dead-pan (consider the scene in which Soyo allows Hiromi to kiss her, with one key stipulation in mind: the exchange of her crummy grey hoodie for his blue fleece jacket). Much like Linda Linda Linda (2005), Gentle Breeze zeros in on the journey, and not the destination. We follow Soyo from her final year at junior high to her eventual transition to high school in another town. In the Yamashitan universe, it's the moments and experiences that really count; milestones, meanwhile, remain on the periphery.
Perhaps the most endearing aspect about Gentle Breeze is its reflexive innocence. Some may perceive the film as naïve – as one critic did, but to this viewer, our perspective seems skewered through the eyes of an adult, rather than a child. Although the content is wholesome and kid-friendly, there are timid suggestions, here and there, that the affairs of the adult world are less cordial. Rumor has it that the deceased woman, whose shrine rests on the bridge, was despondent over unpaid debts. There is unresolved sexual tension between Soyo’s dad and Hiromi’s mom. And whispers galore over Hiromi’s broken one-parent household (his dad left his mom for another woman).
Although lighter in mood, shades of nostalgia in Yamashits's film recall Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), another wistful look at the grand (mis)adventures we allow ourselves to experience during childhood and the stories, we tell afterwards. Except in this story, written by two women (Gentle Breeze is based upon a popular comic strip by Fusako Kuramochi and adapted on screen by Aya Watanabe), expect a tale of sisterhood, rather than brotherhood. For in this rut of pigtails, skirts, and knee-high stockings, passive aggressive spats (one incident involved a urinary infection, no less), as opposed to confrontational fights, prevail on the playground.
As with all things nostalgic, however, loss – or at least the anticipation of loss – enters the picture. Such a sentiment, echoed by Soyo herself, accompanies the film through its passage of time. In an inspired animated sequence, taken place on Soyo’s senior class trip to Tokyo, distorted cut-out figures of tall skyscrapers, landmarks, and trains twirl around Soyo’s oversized profile. The city, a concrete metaphor for all things frenetic and fragmented, has left Soyo overwhelmed and homesick.
Part of me wants to deem this film inconsequential – indeed, the film’s leisure pace and anti-climactic plot lives up to the film’s suggestive title. But such a temptation is, ultimately, downplayed when I think about the extended implications behind such a dismissal. Is ambitious storytelling, then, by mere association a virtue? I beg to differ. I saw the complex but ultimately overwrought The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007) on the same day as Gentle Breeze, and the memories I have of the latter film are far kinder than the former. Not since last year's domestic release of The Taste of Tea (Katsuhito Ishii, 2004) have I experienced this much joy and pleasure from the movies.
