Hiroshi Okuyama’s assured second feature could be slotted as a sports movie, since it adheres to many of the structural requirements of the genre, but eventually the viewer will realize that it only follows the plan in order to upend it. For one thing, there is no make-or-break competition waiting at the end of the tale. Moreover, the coach-athlete dynamic has none of the hackneyed tension that usually forms the dramatic crux of a sports movie. If anything, the instructor here, Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu), has the patience of Job and an attitude that seems geared toward making his charges as relaxed as possible. Logic has it that if there is nothing at stake in a sports movie, there’s nothing to look forward to, but the competition here is more about love than glory.

Arakawa is not the main protagonist. That’s Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama), a junior high age kid with a slight speech impediment and a constitutional inability to bring anything aggressive to the sports he plays out of a sense of obligation rather than interest. He sucks at baseball, but when winter comes early to his small Hokkaido town, he dons skates and attempts to help out the school hockey team, failing softly but no less miserably. Maybe it’s his penchant for being easily distracted, which is where Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi) comes in. She shares the rink with the hockey team, practicing her figure skating routines, and Takuya falls hard. Sakura’s coach, Arakawa, notices his gaze and has an idea, which leads to him gently urging Takuya to take up figure skating himself so he can develop him and Sakura into an ice dance pair. Understanding his limitations but unable to control his eagerness to be next to the one he adores, Takuya agrees; and while Sakura is keen on the idea it has more to do with her regard for Arakawa than any feelings she has for Takuya. In fact, her behavior toward her new partner and would-be paramour is merely polite, because she only has eyes for coach, but he is already spoken for. It’s hinted more than once that Arakawa, once a promising world-class figure skater himself, has come to this town to be with his male lover, who hails from the region. Okuyama doesn’t make too much of the relationship except to imply that Arakawa’s somewhat baffling refusal to point to his own exceptional talents appears to be a means of protecting himself and his partner from the scrutiny of others, a plan that, in the end, isn’t very successful. It’s difficult to say if he’s channeling his dashed professional ambitions into these two kids, but it explains his aforementioned patience and lack of un-sports-movie-like disciplinary application.

Unlike Okuyama’s first movie, the deceptively wry coming-of-age story, Jesus, My Sunshine is impressionistic. The director does his own camerawork, which conveys Takuya’s mindset, especially as he watches Sakura skate, with over-exposed bursts of ecstatic wonder, and it makes perfect sense. Takuya is your classic incoherent adolescent, straining to make his feelings understood and unable to do so. Okuyama doesn’t make the viewer suffer through the kid’s feelings of helplessness but rather makes us share in them as they dissolve into hope while he assiduously learns his routines and becomes actually good at something he’s growing to enjoy. (For the record, both young actors have studied figure skating since they were 4, but Koshiyama gives the more impressive performance because he has to be inept in the beginning.) If his love remains unrequited, it’s still love, and rather than letting us down by denying us the kind of excitement we expect from a sports movie, My Sunshine revels in the overwhelming trust and affection these three people feel for one another, and that’s enough.

In Japanese. Playing Sept. 6-8 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Chanter (050-6868-5001), Theatre Shinjuku (03-3352-1846). Opens wide Sept. 13. 

My Sunshine home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 My Sunshine Film Partners/Commes des Cinemas