Nobuhiro Yamashita‘s Linda Linda Linda deconstructs the typical rhythms of the high school band movie. This naturalistic and sprightly tale of three high school juniors prepping for the big end-of-year concert, newly restored by GKIDS, remains fresh two decades after its release by focusing not on the act of performance itself, but on the surprisingly quiet hours of thoughtful preparation and deepening companionship that lead up to it. This gentle sensibility is amplified by balance of elegance and ease: Each frame is almost mathematically perfect–– its visual style evokes the hyper-composed imagery and soft palette of films like Ghost World or even The Virgin Suicides (a look my household calls “the Fox Searchlight aesthetic”)–– but, like the girls’ school uniforms, worn casually and with the familiarity of the everyday, its masterful cinematography attains an artfully rumpled quality, resisting the coldness that can accompany such framings. The film is down to earth and tender with a hint of melancholy, sweetly celebrating the triumphs of teenage girldom.
As the 2004 term comes to a close at Shibazaki High School, aspiring musicians Kei (Yuu Kashii), Kyoko (Aki Maeda), and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine) find themselves without a vocalist for their band Paranmaum. Kei, their self-assured but temperamental guitarist and one of the band’s founders, has had a falling out with their other leader, Moe (Shione Yukawa) over a boy. In an act of brash defiance, and to prove Moe isn’t needed, Kei decides to ask the first girl they see in their school’s courtyard to join them. When Son (Yuu Kashii), a Korean exchange student, walks by, her Japanese is shaky enough that she accepts the offer without fully understanding the linguistic backflips fronting a punk band will entail. Soon, the geography of her life abroad is reorganized around practice rooms and karaoke bars as she familiarizes herself with jangling tongue twisters of The Blue Hearts, whose songs Kei insists they play “or nothing.” The music is undeniable, but deployed sparingly, first heard on a cassette they find in a bin, then built up slowly in rehearsals as the girls find their footing as a new quartet. “That was awful,” one laughs after their first attempt, “you’re a bit slow.” While the band is never “awful,” these practice sessions are honestly rendered, easy going, and satisfying, a sharp contrast to the drama of Hollywood teen favorites like School of Rock where this kind of scene dominates.
More often than not here, the girls aren’t practicing; they’re going to class, helping out at bake sales, and talking with friends about dramas past and present. Kei’s older ex-boyfriend, for example, is moving to Tokyo, and their obvious lingering chemistry, paired with the end-of-term temporal frame, delivers a real sense of nostalgia for adolescent ennui, hope, and anxieties about youthful futures on the cusp of coming into being. The tonal balance here is somewhere between Dazed and Confused, Juno, and a Jim Jarmusch picture, shaped by a vibrant and eclectic cast of supporting characters. A cool older girl, Takako (Yuko Yamazaki), doles out offhand advice from her quasi-mythic post on the school’s roof, playing her guitar and reading manga by herself without a care in the world; a shy classmate, Makihara (Kenichi Matsuyama) confesses his love to Son, to her perplexity; meanwhile, Kyoko debates talking to her long-term crush, Katsuya Kobayashi (Katsuya Kobayashi), before summer begins. Each scene is lowkey and relaxed, mundane anxieties just shimmering under the surface. As these delicately doled out vignettes suggest, on top of the central plot’s reliance on questions of language, this is a film about communication and miscommunication, missed opportunities and time still measured in class periods and lunch breaks and practice room reservations.
Coming of age, the story reminds us, is mostly about learning how to share one’s still-developing authentic self with others publicly. Son goes to the stage where Paranaum will soon perform by herself and delivers her stage patter to the empty room, envisioning the student body she will soon face. Another wonderful element of this film is its affection for community–– when the time does come for the girls to perform, the kinds of dramatic interpersonal dynamics high school movies so often play out (cross pressures like a mean classmate’s attempt at sabotage, say, or a secret that needs revealing) are absent. The drama is highly interior without being trite, earnestly focused on whether the girls can play as well as they possibly can. Like its emphasis on time between performances, Linda Linda Linda’s exploration of youth in repose is all about the joys of high school as a time of exploration and room to breathe, a rare moment when developing friendships is a central goal. When Makihara tells Son he loves her, she’s confused: “I want to be with my friends,” she replies. “Don’t let anyone tell us when we grow up we’re no longer kids,” Nozomi intones solemnly in a video another classmate is producing. Yamashita‘s direction embodies that sentiment, lending the experience that comes with age to a gratifyingly youthful, purely heartfelt story. It takes both to make a film this effectively kind.
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