Official selection
Tokyo International Film Festival 2018, Berlin International Film Festival 2019, Hong Kong International Film Festival 2019, Beijing International Film Festival 2019, Jeonju International Film Festival 2019, Nippon Connection 2019, Taipei Film Festival 2019, Japan Cuts 2019
Director
Sho Miyake
Writer
Sho Miyake
Cast
Tasuku Emoto, Shizuka Ishibashi, Shota Sometani
contact
SDP, Inc.
Official website
“This is a film which rewards with the cumulative power of small, glimpsed moments”Wendy Ide, SCREEN DAILY
An unnamed bookstore clerk (Tasuku Emoto, also of this year’s THE ISLAND OF CATS, credited here as “me” – the everyman) befriends, and soon falls for coworker Sachiko (Shizuka Ishibashi, the revelation of THE TOKYO NIGHT SKY IS ALWAYS THE DENSEST SHADE OF BLUE). She’s a magnetic, strong-willed young woman, who in turn catches our protagonist’s unemployed roommate Shizuo’s eye (superstar Shota Sometani). Aimless days and sleepless nights follow each other, as the trio of friends and newfound lovers navigates the uncertainty of friendship shifting into something else. In the increasingly precarious Japan of depopulated rural towns, and little-to-no job security — bathed here in the glow of an ever-setting sun — what, exactly, is on the horizon? The realization creeps in that adulthood isn’t all it cracked up to be.
Adapted from a novella by late writer Yasushi Sato — somewhat of a cult literary figure, since his unfortunate suicide in 1990, and subsequent big-screen renaissance in both Mipo Oh’s THE LIGHT SHINES ONLY THERE and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s OVER THE FENCE — AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING is at once breezy and languorous, a hang-out movie “Adrift in Hakodate”-style, doubling as an understated coming-of-age film capturing the strange beauty, as well as the anguish, of youth faced with an uncertain future. Emoto, Ishibashi, and Sometani (PARASYTE) are effortlessly cool as the film’s three lovebirds — a romantic entanglement rendered realistically, in all of the unspoken awkwardness of conflicting feelings and small-town funks. Delicately shot, and beautifully lit by Hakodate’s peculiar light (of Japan’s northernmost island Hokkaido), Miyake’s latest has a vibe, a colour, and a lasting power all of its own — rarely seen in more metropolis-centric fare. Like a quiet love song, it blooms in your heart, unfolds with subtle assurance, and slowly guides you towards the light of an emotionally resonant conclusion. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
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