A time for leisure, a time for old sins to become exonerated, a time for bold courageous leaps into the scariest places fragile souls could possibly dream about – a time simply wasted. As those final few hours begin to tick away the realisation of all those plans, all those desires, becoming permanently abandoned warrants drastic and unpredictable chaos to restore balance in our personal universes once again. Summer has come to die; as the first autumnal sun dawns over the horizon the long warm summer months stride out into the ocean until fully submerged by the tides and water filling the lungs. Bearing witness to such an occasion a male head mysteriously protrudes from the sandy beaches, blissfully unaware of the direction his night is about to take. This is just the tip of the deceptively voluminous iceberg that is Yuki Horiuchi's “All Summer Long”.
“All Summer Long” is screening at Skip City International D-Cinema Festival
“This boring summer that once seemed to last forever has to come to an end” speaks this head in the sand as the autumnal light kisses the eerily abandoned beach, signaling an end to Yamanobe and Kimi's long voyage into the night. Prowling the whereabouts of a missing CEO, which saw their interview for Magenta terminated, this mismatched pair set off for snacks and drinks to fuel their adventure. Running parallel to their Stand By Me mission are the lives of many who will cross their path, including two bored shop clerks, Kyoko and Kento, who slack off until Kyoko abruptly leaves her introverted coworker for a party before he is taken out for a drink by their manager Makiko; a close friend on Kimi's, Rinko, takes violent measures against the older, married man she refuses to stop seeing; and Shuichi, the first to meet the beach head, is desperate to reach Rinko to confess something that has been troubling him.
Spanning the course of just one night, these events run in tandem with one another, overlapping each other freer than the characters whose lives become intertwined by fate's grand designs. Horiuchi's characters are splendidly aloof, their situations as deadpan as the expressions on their faces, unravelling their intricacies one awkward laugh at a time. Stemming from the wild incompatibility between the free-spirited and the reserved, the meek and the bold, “All Summer Long” playfully teases how such a word is void of any substance, prodding and poking how hilarious dissimilarities are what make life just a little more interesting. And yet, for all its whimsy, for all its awkward pauses, the film teeters above a sinister realm, as if one misplaced step forward would draw out something ugly and repulsive; this is something the movie acknowledges, offering glimpses behind its sweet facade with no more than brief nods, but the brevity does nothing to soften the impact these nods leave.
Cast with relatively unknown actors who triumph in embodying the quirks, charms, and unsettling truths of their characters, “All Summer Long” is an ensemble piece bursting with young talent, none more so than in Ryo Igarashi and Ayano Kasumi, who take on the timid Yamanobe and animatedly eccentric Kimi respectively. Despite the body language and facial expressions deployed by their cohorts, Igarashi and Kasumi elevate theirs to the next level, their blossoming friendship is as dependent on their physical behaviour as it is the organically disparate script shared between them; bouncing off each other's energy, the two fuel the story's central journey with such incandescent vibrancy whilst remaining entirely authentic relatability they remind the audience of their own long lost youth. At the apex of Horiuchi's loveable film is the head in the sand, a man so enveloped in mystery and intrigue neither his origins nor his intentions are free from riddles; he is a captivating tour-de-force of faux-wisdom and humour, and his limited physical presence makes his time on screen nothing but memorable!
Weaving multiple narratives presents its own challenges, especially as far as pacing is concerned, yet Horiuchi succeeds in keeping his stories concise, venturing into the trivial and the humdrum only when he needs the film to do so. His shooting style leaves the audience hanging on every word, on every eye roll, on every nod and trembling lip, all the while keeping spectators at arm's length. Absorbed in his world is the heightened verisimilitudinal sound design: there is little in the way of a non-diegetic score to distract and manipulate, keeping “All Summer Long” firmly yet misleadingly rooted in the real world. Despite that, there is something strangely fantastical about this setup – this is a testament to Horiuchi's playfulness!
Horiuchi's film is an oddball entity, one which straddles the fine line between the real and the surreal all too comfortably; it holds up a mirror for all who watch to find themselves in, daring its audience to cling on to something they can relate to, all the while throwing curveballs to throw everyone off its true scent. Uncanny and yet so familiar, what truly sets “All Summer Long” apart is its cast, who allow just enough of their character's startling truths to emerge to crack the surface without veering off the side of the yellow brick road. There is no innocence left in summer's death throes; as the season gives in to autumn all will find themselves in situations they could never imagine. Whether or not they learn something from their experiences, or whether they will simply disappear with the season remains to be seen.
