A Gentle Breeze in the Village

In a small Japanese village the primary and middle schools share one building and the total number of pupils is a handful. Soyo, fourteen, is the oldest in the class. A boy transfers in from Tokyo and a small shift begins in the village's unchanging order. Nobuhiro Yamashita directed, from Fusako Kuramochi's comic. The rhythm is deliberately slow. Seasons, farm work, bus timetables and school days form the skeleton; there is almost no plot. Adolescence here is shown not as crisis but as distraction: Soyo does not know what she wants and the film does not try to resolve it. The humour is dry and quiet; as in Yamashita's other films the characters speak without reacting. Rural Japan's population loss sits in the background and is never mentioned. Who it is for: viewers who like calm Japanese youth films and everyday narratives. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; the film deliberately goes nowhere.