Have a Song on Your Lips

Yuri Kashiwagi, once known as a pianist, comes back years later to her small hometown by the sea and takes over a middle school choir club as a substitute. It has been a long time since she touched a piano, and at first she gets on badly with the students. The choir starts preparing for a competition. The teacher opens up to the students, and the students to the teacher, slowly. Takahiro Miki directed the film from a novel, and it found a wide audience in Japan. Yui Aragaki plays the teacher. The telling follows the familiar shape of choir films: a scattered group, a reluctant teacher, the competition at the end. But it ties the singing not to a success story but to children who have not dared to speak. The result of the competition is not what the film is about.