Happyend [NYFF 2024]

Studio: Metrograph Pictures
Director: Neo Sora

Oct 11, 2024 By Kaveh Jalinous Web Exclusive

At first glance, it might be difficult to see how a tale of increasingly autonomous protest against an unjust, draconian society and a simple, far-reaching coming-of-age story can coexist within a single film. In Neo Sora’s debut feature, Happyend, the two fuse in stunning, unforgettable fashion.

Set in a near-future Tokyo that looks nearly identical to present-day Tokyo—save for a large cloud that hovers over the city, delivering news and the occasional advertisement—Sora’s film follows a friend group of five teenagers in their final year of high school. The group is extremely tight, all obsessed with house music and (like all teenagers) rebelling against their school authority. Sora’s gaze focuses most closely on the group’s two closest friends, Kou (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta (Hayato Kurihara). Having been friends since childhood, the two are inseparable. That is, until late one morning, as the dawn has already risen over the city, the two decide to pull a prank on their school principal.

After the principal finds out about their prank, he installs a security system—aptly named Panopty—that monitors all of the students’ movements, tagging them and docking them “points” every time they act against school rules. The new, totalitarian society of the school affects Kou and Yuta in completely different ways. Kou—who’s not a naturalized Japanese citizen, despite his Zainichi Korean family living in Japan for four generations—develops more knowledge about, and more desire for, acts of protest and rebellion against a system he knows is unjust. Yuta continues to rebel against the school, in mostly frivolous and self-centered ways. Their two different methods set them on diverse paths, both discovering who they are and realizing that, perhaps, they weren’t as compatible as they once thought.

It’s almost impossible to state just how hard it is to balance the various narrative threads within Happyend. Even the above description barely scratches the surface of the film’s commentary, which functions as a larger criticism of both Japanese society and the false promises and increasingly drastic rule-breaking of politicians in general, all in the name of “safety and protection.” At times, Sora himself doesn’t entirely know how to balance it all—especially in sequences where Kou’s political activity is crosscut with Yuta (and the other friends’) typical high-schooler actions and conversations, the film can feel unbalanced and too scattershot. And yet, there’s a specific type of energy that propels Happyend from start to finish, making it impossible not to care about, or relate to, what’s happening on-screen. It’s a film that’s lovable not despite its flaws, but because of them. At times, the feature almost feels like a constantly evolving, quickly developing work-in-progress itself, just like all of the characters it centers around.

To that extent, Happyend possesses an über-specific type of free-spirited, frenetic storytelling approach that perfectly captures the coming-of-age experience, perhaps explaining why it works so well as that kind of film. Despite their complicated natures, none of the five friends are unlikeable. From the film’s opening scene, their affection for one another seems palpable and authentic. Watching them all cope with the fact that a major time in their lives is coming to an end while realizing that their voices can be more powerful than they ever thought imaginable—despite all the forces and powers that be telling them they’re worth nothing, or “too young to make a difference”—is genuinely inspiring, and not-at-all too preachy or clichéd. This style also allows the film to switch tones and genres relatively quickly, often taking serious, thriller-esque situations (with extremely high stakes) and tinting them with a youthful, humorous tint hue. Sora’s framing of the coming-of-age experience—in dialogue, of course, but also in the ways the characters act toward one another and physically interact with one another—is wholly unique, charming, and heartwarming. (http://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/happyend/)

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