Metrograph presents Shinji Sômai x 3, a program of recent restorations anchored by a week-long run of Moving, the latest of Sômai’s films to be restored and re-released, beginning August 2 at Metrograph In Theater. P. P. Rider and Typhoon Club round out the series, with both of Sômai’s earlier works arriving on Metrograph At Home on August 9.
“I can say with absolute conviction that no Japanese filmmaker makes a film without being conscious of Shinji Sômai’s existence… [Sômai] convinced the Japanese audience at the time that ‘cinema is not dead yet.’… For anyone who wants to see a movie that has the power to change and sustain your life, I urge you to see Shinji Sômai’s films.” —Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Shinji Sômai’s tragic death at age 53 in 2001 robbed Japanese cinema of one of its foremost talents, a poet of alienation, frustration, and youthful revolt whose 13 films show a distinct and compassionate perspective, likened by critic Chris Fujiwara to that of Jean Vigo and Nicholas Ray for his lyrical depictions of adolescence. Revered in his native country—where his admirers include Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Hirokazu Kore-eda—but too-little-screened abroad, Sômai’s revelatory cinema can be experienced here with recent restorations of three of his greatest evocations of youth in all of its loneliness, rage, and beauty.
Shinji Sômai x 3 runs from August 2 to August 15, with select encore screenings to follow.
Titles include P. P. Rider, Typhoon Club, and Moving, which opens for a week-long run at the theater on August 9.
MOVING
1993, 125 min, 4K DCP
Blindsided by her parents’ divorce and her father’s disappearance from the family home, sixth grader Ren plunges headlong into rebellion, questioning and pushing back against an adult world whose authority she had previously taken for granted. An operatically emotional and psychologically acute portrait of adolescence that immerses one in the point of view of its young protagonist, played with unforgettable vivacity by young Tabata Tomoko, which has remained one of Sômai’s most beloved works since its premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, and sparkles still today thanks to a new restoration. A Cinema Guild release.
The 4K restoration was completed in 2023 by Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation under the supervision of the film’s cinematographer, Toyomichi Kurita.
P. P. RIDER
1983, 118 min, 4K DCP
Adapted from a story by Leonard Schrader—yes, Paul’s brother—P.P. Rider is a cheeky, playful, and consistently surprising adventure yarn about three young friends who, having witnessed the kidnapping of their school bully, set out on a journey across Japan in hopes of freeing him from his yakuza captors, mixing with incompetent cops and In the Realm of the Senses (1976) star Tatsuya Fuji along the way. A frisky farce employing a dazzling array of stylistic conceits, the filmmaking showing every bit the youthful glee of its protagonists.
New 2K Remaster.
TYPHOON CLUB
1985, 115 min, 4K DCP
Emotionally raw, enormously tender and, finally, tentatively hopeful, Sômai’s breakthrough film—winner of the Grand Prix at the first Tokyo International Film Festival—observes a group of provincial junior high students who find themselves forced to take shelter in their school, unsupervised, as a savage summer storm makes landfall, unleashing their repressed anger and amour as the Biblical deluge threatens to drown their sleepy village. “One of the most beautiful and touching teenage films I’ve ever seen. An absolutely devastating film.”—Bernardo Bertolucci
The 4K restoration was completed in 2023 by Chuo Eigabieki Co. Ltd. under the supervision of the film’s assistant director, Koji Enokido.