Look at the above poster. What does it tell you about the film? I would begrudge
Linda Linda Linda's marketing team for the false pretenses thrown up by the film's advertising, but on the other hand it may have drawn in an audience that wouldn't have given this film the light of day otherwise. Good thing too, because
Linda Linda Linda isn't fluff at all - actually, it is one of the strangest, sweetest, saddest coming-of-age stories I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.
The film's story is simple. We open in Shiba High School just before their end-of-year celebrations. For the senior students - our protagonistes included - this is the last hurrah before heading to university, the workplace or some other facet of adult life. The main characters' band has recently broken up - an argument between keyboardist Kei and singer Rinko over guitarist Moe's finger injury has left the group with three members - Kei, drummer Kyoko and bassist Nozomi. It is a race against the clock to find a new set of songs and a new singer for the battle of the bands in three days' time. Kyoko, Nozomi and Kei settle on a selection of 80s punk hits by the band The Blue Hearts, and on a whim Kei recruits Korean exchange student Son to be the new singer, even though she can hardly speak Japanese!
The arc of the story is predictable and the conclusion inevitable, but that only adds to this film's odd charm. After all, the story isn't the real point here - this is a film about friendship, about loss, about the divide between adulthood and youth, about growing up and about the alienation, boredom, fear and joy of the adolescent experience. The way director Yamashita deals with these themes is both joyous and, ultimately, heartbreaking.
The film's opening shot is captured through the lens of a grainy handheld videocam. A somewhat homely girl delivers, without affect, a few gloriously confused 'pro-youth' manifestos: "Don't let anyone tell us that when we grow up we stop being kids!", "Where are the real we? Are the real we here?". This is soon exposed as a student-directed ad spot for the high school's upcoming holly festival. The director frets about the girl's line delivery, she exasperatedly asks "can I go now?" - with this reveal we are shown that the 'sacredness of youth' so often glorified in pictures will not apply in this film.
Linda Linda Linda's teenagers are hardly wet-eyed about their situation, so why should
we coo in nostalgia?
The characters in this film are adrift in their own little oceans, ready to cast off their youthful chrysalides and move into the ‘adult world’, but not entirely sure as to what being part of that ‘adult world’ entails. This is externalized through Yamashita’s roomy mise-en-scene and frequent use of long shots that show the characters ‘lost’ in their environments, becoming part of the scenery, and literalized in the character of Son, who is quite literally out of place. She has no friends - apart from a little girl with whom she speaks Korean (her relationship to this girl is never specified, she functions as something of an avatar of the youth Son is leaving behind) - and she can barely speak the language of the country she’s in. Bae Doona has proven herself time and time again to be a magnificent comic actor with a Lucille Ball-esque command of physical humour. Her performance here is a treasure, replete with both the actress’ unique funnywoman gifts and a rich sense of warmth and backstory that makes the gangly, awkward Son more than the sum of her individual tics and mannerisms. More on her later.
The first shot after the title follows Kyoko - the drummer who seeks to reunite the band - as she wanders through the halls of her school, the background buzzing with activity. The trappings of the school year are being put away as decorations are being put up - these actions, repeated throughout the film, become symbolic of the film’s approach to the traditional ‘coming-of-age’ paradigm: here, youth is being celebrated and deconstructed simultaneously. A tide is beginning to shift. James Iha (of the Smashing Pumpkins) composed the wonderful ambient score - one that is instrumental (lol!) to the film's success. The shifting guitars and atmospheric walls of sound reinforce the ideas of the characters' statis and eventual release, and there are many lovely small touches (such as the Pink Pantheresque theme that plays when the girls sneak into their school for a late-night rehearsal).
Yamashita shows a magnificent eye for composition, and he subtly reflects the film’s themes of beginnings and ends, of borders about to be crossed, in his skilful manipulation of shape within the frame. We often see environments ‘cut in two’, almost - characters positioned in between two different settings or glimpsed through doorways or anterooms. As the film wears on, and the characters come closer to the end of an era, we get more insight into their feelings. Close-ups become more commonplace, characters begin to be shot at odds with their environments, dominating the frame where they were once obscured by distance or other action. This is especially evident in a wonderful scene where Son, now blossoming in the presence of her new friends, much better at Japanese, her singing improving, sneaks off from the group right before they begin practice. She sneaks in to the school auditorium, stands on the stage - poised in the middle of the frame, her dark clothes a stark contrast with the off-white wall behind her. Make-believing she’s performing, she introduces - in Korean - her friends to an imaginary crowd. At this moment the awkward fish-out-of-water is gone and we see Son as the funny, confident, sweet girl she really is. Bae’s wonderful acting and Yamashita’s sly framing shows us how Son is beginning to build a home, and an identity, in this alien land.
The dialogue in the film is sparse, rarely expository and realistic to a T. Conversations trail off, are interrupted or left incomplete. The acting is naturalistic. This treatment of the story, combined with Yamashita’s detached framing, lessens the sense of watching people work through a story and creates an atmosphere of
being in the story. The relaxed mood of dialogue scenes and the gentle rapport of the lead characters does more to endear them to the audience than any amount of wordy speeches and emotional backstory would have. This approach - of feeling like you’re befriending these girls yourself throughout the film’s duration - greatly increases the suspense of the penultimate sequence and the mixed triumph and sadness of the ending. I’m making the film sound like teen-movie Antonioni, but it really isn’t - Yamashita has the wit to inject moments of observational humour (Kyoko talking to her crush on the phone as her brother does the world’s most pathetic push-ups in the room behind her; a brilliantly banal dream sequence) and lovely, subtle touches (Son begins the film trailing behind the other girls, by ¾ through she is leading the pack), the intuition to illustrate real moments of boredom and isolation and the grace to leave plot points unresolved (Kyoko never does tell her crush how she feels).
In style, Yamashita has the dry humour and languid aesthetic of a Kaurismäki or Jarmusch combined with the reliance on subtle, unshowy emotion and effect of Shimizu or Takahata, but he has an emotional openness and honesty that is all his own. His clear affection for his characters, and his skill in setting up theme and mood, turning the final passage into a fanfare of pain as well as triumph - as the characters finally take the stage, we see their performance intercut with an amazing selection of shots of the rainswept school - the lockers, classrooms, the swimming pool: all empty. The school year is over, as is the girls’ childhood. It is time for them to move on.
A note to those interested in seeing the film - there are several instances where Korean is being spoken instead of Japanese, although they aren’t differentiated in the subtitles. A bit lame, seeing as the using of one language over the other in certain scenes is quite important. Son speaks Korean when she tells Kyoko that she should front up about her feelings for Kazuya, only to be told she’s ‘speaking gibberish’. Son speaks Korean to the little girl in every scene with her, in the auditorium scene and to Kei in the bathroom scene (which may or may not be a part of the dream sequence, I can’t really tell - Kei answers her in Japanese as if she understands Korean). Macky also speaks to Son in Korean when he is ‘professing his love’ in the equipment room, she responds in Japanese.
