Cruel Story of Youth

A film set in Tokyo in 1960. Makoto is a high school student. In the evenings she goes about with a friend and gets into the cars of strange men. One night a man will not let her go. Kiyoshi steps in, beats him, and rescues her. The two of them start seeing each other. Then Kiyoshi finds a method. Makoto will get into the car, the man will reach for her, Kiyoshi will arrive at that exact moment and demand money. It works and turns into a regular income. From there the film is a story of collapse. An abortion, a debt, an arrest and a separation. Makoto has an older sister. Yuki belongs to the previous generation; she had a story of her own and now lives quietly. What the narrative is interested in is not crime but the gap between generations: the film sets the two side by side and takes the anger of the young from the surrender of their elders. Politics is not in the background but inside. Footage of street demonstrations enters the narrative and the protest wave of the period is taken directly into the film. The form is disruptive. Colour and a wide screen are used, but the framings are deliberately unbalanced; characters are pushed to the edge and long empty spaces are left between them. The film is counted among the founding works of the Japanese New Wave. It was the director's second feature and his break with the studio began after it. Yūsuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano and Yoshiko Kuga are in the cast. Nagisa Ōshima wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone curious about the Japanese New Wave and hard films about the young. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to like the characters; both behave badly and the film does not soften it.