Sayonara Girls (2022) & Kalanchoe (2017) Raw, Authentic High School Stories from Indie Japan (Review)

There’s a fun irony in saying hello to a new on demand platform joining our coverage umbrella with a movie all about saying goodbye (or sayonara as this is a Japanese movie). Sakka brings “quality Japanese independent films to the worldwide audience, with as few filters as possible to the filmmakers”, and their latest release is Sayonara Girls – the feature length debut from Shun Nakagawa, who also directed the 40-minute short film Kalanchoe (2017), which we’ll get to in due course.

Shun Nakagawa adapted a novel by Asai Ryo about a straightforward part of every Japanese student’s academic life, graduating High School – the added kicker is that the school is getting knocked down in two days. Schools, colleges, high schools and universities come and go with the ebb and flow of time, often merging, abandoned for newer builds or subject to atrophy, but this is usually many years later (mine burned down for the record). Having a separation of time allows ex-students space to process their memories (fond or otherwise), and with demolition set for the day after graduation, adulthood is bulldozing these children’s lives, forcing them to leave behind their youth without a second thought or consideration.

The stories Nakagawa uses to encapsulate the goodbye for this pillar of a community are fourfold. Manami (Kawai Yuumi), is chosen to deliver a speech at the graduation ceremony, but the day before the event the principal wants a last-minute change included, given it’s the last ever graduation ceremony – to sum up her experiences within this building, oblivious to a traumatic event in her past. Sakuta (Nakai Tomo), is a shy girl who comes to terms with her isolation and difficulties with social situations – powering through them to have something positive from her time at school. A music club led by Yuki (Ono Rina), has their poll for who should headline the student performance after the graduation ceremony. The student body jokingly votes for a band on the spectrum of metal (Heaven’s Door), who sound great at first, only none of them can play their instruments and the singer, Morisaki (Sato Himi), can’t sing – which leads to a great visual gag. Finally, Kyoko (Komiyama Rina), has to deal with the fallout of an argument with her boyfriend, Terada (Usa Takuma), as he wants to stay local while she wants to go off and be a “Tokyo Girl” at college with her best friend.

There’s a lot to process – to the point I can’t even begin to hint at all the twists and turns along the way, but such is the way with a piece with a narrative construction not a million miles away from a soap opera. Just for clarity, that isn’t a slight on that form of storytelling as they’re as legitimate as any other form and, vitally, perfect for Nakagawa’s busy script.

Kawai Yuumi probably has the biggest role to fill in Sayonara Girls and her performance is the most raw and emotional of an incredibly young and impressive ensemble. Her part of the script incorporates the more flighty end of the movie, dipping into dreams, memory and fantasy in what’s otherwise a documentary-like presentation. That being said, once you realise what’s going on in her final two days at high school, it’s incredibly moving – as is the story of the shy girl, Sakuta. It’s a plot thread that I could relate to, and it hit me pretty hard when one girl says “I wish we could’ve become friends sooner”. The music performance almost feels like an afterthought as, instead of being heavily thematic, it leads the movie to one of its most emotional (and weird for someone with a Catholic upbringing), plot beats. That’s right, this story of a Japanese High School has a big graduation blow-out with an acapella version of “Oh, Danny Boy”. The thread with the pair of young lovers falling out symbolises the end of childhood relationships, when people who you see every day suddenly vanish, never to be seen again – something we all say won’t happen to us, but heartbreakingly it always does.

Functionally operating as both a soap opera and an anthology movie, Sayonara Girls is a very strong feature debut, and with some narrative exceptions, you could tell me this was a documentary and I’d believe you as it feels that real and lived-in. The cinematography also deserves note as the film is shot with the language of the documentary, which allows the camera to jump from group to group as if its gaze represents an unseen student. More specifically, handheld, wide angles and mostly operating with naturalistic lighting allows the school itself to become a character. The stories themselves all keep the interest, but the space brought by these affections results in numerous lulls, making an already long film feel a little too long. Even so, this is an easy recommendation for people with an interest in coming-of-age stories, especially if you have something to relate to on the smorgasbord of ideas and themes the script touches upon – which to be fair, should be everyone.

A fine introduction to Sakka as a video on demand platform, but that’s not all as we also have Nakagawa’s short, Kalanchoe. Well, it’s not that short as it’s 40 minutes long, which is right along the lines of when a short is officially classed a feature. After getting an impromptu lesson on LGBTQ+, a high school class grows suspicious that there is a queer student among them. The concept on paper makes it sound like it would be a controversial piece, but given that it featured in the Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, those fears can be put to bed.

There’s a version with no subtlety or nuance that uses the narrative as a means to further a homophobic, bigoted agenda, which does receive air in the short as two boys decide to root out the “gay, lesbian and other creeps” that might be in their class, but one of the boys has an utter change of heart when he realises the human cost of their witch hunt. That aspect of Nakagawa’s script is maddeningly accurate, but in reality the second boy may not have had a change of heart as school is a place to learn social cues for life afterwards, and while some people take the cues, others don’t (mostly the bullies, which those two clearly are). Beyond that, Kalanchoe‘s primary concern is a group of four girls and their interactions in the face of their class getting this lecture where no other did. It’s a really rather sweet depiction of the confusion of queer realisation, and there are three concurrent scenes that you’d have to have a heart made of stone to not find affecting. It starts with a bike ride, followed by an awkward failure to admit feelings, which is concluded by a bus ride and the absolute devastation of being unable to tell the person how much they like them. That girl sitting on the bus crying is no mere actor provoking tear ducts for a showy, cinematic display as it’s real, and there’s a giddy scene that plays over the credits that’s sure to melt your heart – furthering how emotional that bus ride is. Therein lies the single thing that Nakagawa excels in above else, and his ability to get human, raw performances is sure to see him fast tracked in the Japanese industry.

So there we have Shun Nakagawa in “short” and long form. He’s definitively an actor’s director who tells stories away from the beaten path with a simple and universally appreciable elegance. His cinematography has a patience borrowed from the long take style that’s jumping over from documentary to fiction filmmaking. My only note from these two films is how well he can transition away from stories focusing on high school, but given the confidence of his filmmaking, I’d say he’s very much a name from Indie Japan worth keeping a close eye on.

Rob’s Archive – Sayonara Girls (2022) & Kalanchoe (2017)