‘Happyend’ Review: Neo Sora’s Fiction Feature Debut Is a Poetic Portrait of Youth in Crisis

Early on in “Happyend,” writer/director Neo Sora’s assured first narrative feature following his revelatory documentary about his late father, “ Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus ,” we see a group of youths running into the silent streets of Tokyo after police shut down an underground party. Things could have been dire had it not been for two of them creating a distraction so they could all escape, yet they yell out in excitement as they hurl themselves into the darkness of the night before everything stops and they’re all frozen in time.

Accompanied by Lia Ouyang Rusli’s stellar score, the title card gently appears then quickly disappears. It’s as if we’re getting a fleeting snapshot of youthful joy we already feel is coming to an end. Their world is getting bigger just as it does smaller as they must face down adulthood while grappling with the growing repression all around them.

Though Seo notably doesn’t freeze a moment in time like this again until the very end, the way his quietly moving film shifts into being about surveillance, scrutiny, sadness and the attempt to find liberation in it all instills everything with a similar sense of more weighty thematic substance. Though few of his characters appreciate it now, these moments in time are precious ones that become more upended by the changing forces of the world. As we observe this along with them, the film becomes a poetic portrait of youth as well as a truthful encapsulation of the way the pains of life disrupt the slivers of joy.

The film, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, takes place in a near-future Tokyo where the potential of getting hit by devastating earthquakes has everyone rattled. Alongside this, government surveillance is growing more present in the lives of youth, with the most targeted being those who are considered outsiders. Even if they have lived there for years, much as is the case anywhere in the world where xenophobia gains a foothold, anyone who doesn’t fit in a narrow box of what it means to be Japanese is scrutinized. This extends to cameras being installed in their school.

Caught in the middle of this are best friends Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaki) who, along with their charming posse, Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng) and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), must navigate this ever-changing world just as they must make sense of their futures. Where many films about young people can be woefully out of touch in how they capture their characters engaging with each other, “Happyend” is astute and insightful, never overplaying its hand. The film just lets us spend time with the characters as they play around with a prank proving to be a central component of the story and ponder what comes next when school is over. It’s a coming-of-age story with a more relaxed pacing that’s then injected with an existential urgency.

There are some, like their classmate Fumi (Kilala Inori), who begin to fight back against the new surveillance, but “Happyend” is never some sort of conventional thriller. Instead, it’s often profoundly funny, like in an early scene where Ata-chan flips off the camera or when they begin resourcefully tricking the system by finding its blindspots. Its speculative fiction grounded in the authentic lives of these youth as, once the cameras become more normal, we start to see the way they reshape the dynamic of the school.

Without ever spelling things out, Sora captures the way this surveillance is no neutral way of discouraging bad acts or catching troublemakers. Instead, it’s something that starts to weigh on all of the teens in a world already heavy enough with looming goodbyes and constant earth-shaking.

This is all often shot from a literal physical distance by cinematographer Bill Kirstein, who has worked with Seo on his prior films, with key revelations coming in conversations where characters are far from the camera. We hear them talk about things with their backs to us and each other, as if they can’t face their friends when talking about painful subjects. Critically, this doesn’t distance the audience from the characters as they’re actually taken more into their corner of the world when shown roaming the beautifully shot streets trying to piece together what their future will be. Be it in the abandoned hiding spots they retreat to or the cold hallways of their school now perpetually under the eye of a camera, there remains an earned warmth that sneaks up on you.

Seo excavates universal truths that transcend all generational and cultural divides. The many geographical, social and emotional pains these young people are grappling with are ones everyone faces down. As they find ways to fight this, coming to realize all the many ways they may not be so easily able to, there is something both genuinely heartfelt yet quietly haunting about it. We see so much in each of these scrappy young kids that is being smothered yet still bursting free, with all of the ensemble giving some of the most naturalistic youth performances you’ll see in a film all year.

There is room for joy in Seo’s vision, with the score doing wonders for this, right alongside the melancholy. When we then get one more frozen snapshot moment in time near the finale, you only wish that you could bottle up all of what was captured. Life’s many pains come from this being impossible, but that only makes films like this that much more essential. We can’t ever pause time in our own lives, but cinema like “Happyend” can do this in small ways, never skipping over the suffocating parts of existence just as it does the sublime.

Seo’s feature debut is then similarly one worth cherishing and what we can only hope is the first snapshot of many.

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