I have been a performer off and on for most of my life. My best friend is in a couple bands. Needless to say, we both loved this movie. We caught it at the local Art House movie theatre (bellow out to the gigantic folks at Portland’s Historic Hollywood Theatre!) .
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What’s it about? A Japanese high school girl group has a falling out with their lead singer about an incident that injures one of the other girls. There are harm feelings all around. So the remaining girls resolve to swap instruments and draft the local misfit (the stunningly talented super-model-turned actress Du-na Bae) Korean girl to express lead.
Nothing turns out quite like you’d examine. There are wonderous microscopic moments all tied together with the tour-de-force-of-nature that is Bae. The smaller characters are well defined, and you fetch a true sense of this world.
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Captures the feeling of giddiness/stress that is performance better than virutally any movie I’ve seen in years. Do you savor punk music? Do you savor movies about misfits? Do you treasure films about finding your fill area? THEN Accelerate and accept this film. A proper stunner.
Japanese indie film “Linda Linda Linda” follows the memoir of four high school girls who need to learn to play the songs of the Blue Hearts, 80s Japanese punk rock band, for the annual school festival. They got only three days to practice, and the vocal happens to be an international student from Korea. But can they master the songs and play them in front of the audiences?
The anecdote is simple. As two girls recently left the group, three remaining members of the band Kyoko (Aki Maeda, “Battle Royale”), Kei (Yu Kashii) and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine) have to rep a vocalist for the original band. They recruit a vexed Korean exchange student Son (Du-na Bae, “The Host”), who, as it turns out, shows unexpected side of her character as she keeps practicing.
[SLOW-MOVING BUT TOUCHING] First, sustain this in mind before watching “Linda Linda Linda” of which mood is something different from such films as, say, “School of Rock” or “Hard Day’s Night” (both my approved films) . The catchy Blue Hearts songs are improbable and the rock concert scenes are chubby of energy, but the greatness of director Nobuhiro Yamashita is that he not only succeeded in expressing the youthful energy of high school girls, but also cleverly suggesting that the girls are leaving slack their younger days though they themselves are not aware of it.
To fully be pleased “Linda Linda Linda,” please remember these things. Annual high school festivals (usually called “bunka-sai” in Japanese) are usually held in autumn and the girls are in the third (and last) year of high school. That means this is their final chance to join in the bunka-sai of their school. Son will go benefit to her country and most probably they will not play together again. Yamashita inserts several episodes or images that imply the festival (or the sweet, gay days of youth) is going to be over soon - the images of deserted schoolyard or one of the girl’s ex-boyfriend leaving the town, for instance. Only grown-ups around the girls know this fact (listen carefully the words from the teacher), but the girls themselves do not seem to realize this, or even if they do, they don’t understand the meaning of it … until long after their youth is past.
The film deftly captures the atmosphere of high school festivals in Japan. I can grunt you the authenticity of each scene of the film because I was once a high school student there. So remarkable time and efforts are achieve into “bunka-sai”: classrooms are turned into shops selling noodles, ice cream stand, rock music club or “stunned house.” It is precious moment of life, which becomes portion of bitter-sweet memories of youth only after you realize you have left it tedious forever.
The acting is uniformly tremendous, especially the quick-witted performance from Du-na Bae as Son, who is to be seen in “The Host,” a 2006 mega-hit in South Korea. In fact she might be a bit too aged to play the role Son (Du-na Bae was about 25 years-old at the time of shooting), but her spontaneous and engaging performance makes us forget that. The film is also benefited from the authentic residence as it was shot in the accurate, now disused building of Maebashi Industrial High School in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, which had recently moved to another place.
“Linda Linda Linda” uses a slightly downbeat near in telling the narrative, avoiding the cliched station devices. It is sometimes slow-moving, but in intelligent slowly, it shows a realistic portrait of high school life in Japan. Wherever you are, you will gaze it is an humorous and touching film that captures the essence of youth.
