Neo Sora's disturbing near-future youth drama

Science fiction as a cautionary socio-political commentary, Happy ending marks a confident first step towards narrative feature films for Neo Sora, who last year made the touching documentary tribute to his late father, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus. The Japanese writer-director offsets the film’s depth of feeling with understatement and gentle humor, working with a cast of attractive young people as graduating high school classmates who face—or refuse to face—a grim outlook for their futures. Capturing that transitional moment when seemingly permanent adolescent bonds suddenly seem uncertain, this is a melancholy drama laced with notes of anger and anxiety, but also of resilience.

Sora opens with text on the screen about traditional enforcers of crumbling systems becoming tired in the near future, ushering in a period of change. That change is represented by youthful rebellion.

Focusing on five inseparable friends and an influential outsider, the director effectively observes their acts of individual and collective resistance, in the shadow of a government that tends towards totalitarianism and a climate in which the threat of natural disasters is constant.

Earthquake warnings via cellphone have become a normal part of life, prompting the prime minister to announce expanded government power in the event of an emergency. This is evident when protest movements form and police crackdowns become violent.

All this is just a backdrop, however, for a delicate portrait of late adolescence, poised between pleasurable distractions and creeping anxieties about what comes next. At its center are two longtime friends whose contrasting responses to the dark mood around them, both at school and in the national political arena, expose differences neither had previously been aware of.

Close since childhood, Yuta (Hayao Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaki) are talented amateur DJs, who aspire to a career behind the mixer. Their easy and uncomplicated bond extends to a crew that also includes Tomu (Arazi), Ming (Shina Peng), and Ata-chan (Yuta Hayashi), whose renegade sense of style can be seen in the flowing skirt she pairs with her uniform of a white shirt and black blazer.

When the police break up an unlicensed techno party, the group returns to school after hours, cleverly distracting security with a meowing phone app and heading upstairs to the “Music Research Club” to bust out some beats and dance. Later, as Yuta and Kou are on the roof smoking a cigarette, the sight of their uptight principal's (Shiro Sano) shiny new yellow sports car proves too much to resist. Their prank gets the whole school laughing the next morning, but it has repercussions.

The police are summoned, prompting student activist Fumi (Kilala Inori) to rant about cops being “bureaucrats with guns” who serve only to protect the country's wealth. Kou is the prime suspect, more because he comes from a Korean family than anything else; the principal, who calls the car vandalism “terrorism,” threatens to deny Kou a college recommendation. But without evidence, disciplinary measures take a different turn.

The principal has installed a new and complex security system with facial recognition cameras placed throughout the school, which allows him to identify bad students and punish them with demerit points. At first, it is treated as a joke, with Ata-chan receiving applause when he quickly racks up ten points for making obscene gestures at a camera.

The graduating class finds that their friendly teacher has been replaced by a humorless, rule-abiding character, and the Music Research Club is deemed a fire hazard and shut down, while the electronic equipment is locked away in a storage closet.

A major earthquake, which further damages the car, prompts the prime minister to issue an emergency decree, claiming that natural disasters increase crime rates. Fumi encourages Kou to join her in the ensuing street protests. The ripple effect of alarm and paranoia sends out neighborhood watch groups to patrol the streets at night.

Kou begins to feel frustrated by Yuta's apolitical immaturity, his “have fun until the world ends” attitude. Among other signs of group unity being tested, the most touching is Yuta's initially hurt reaction when Tomu, who is biracial, shares that he is going to college in America, where he has relatives.

The situation at the school becomes even more incendiary when a military instructor is called in to teach self-defense, and in another example of casual racism, all non-Japanese citizens are excluded “for security reasons.” Fumi leads the resistance, her actions producing results and inspiring defiance in others, most amusingly seen in Ata-chan's graduation gown. But when Yuta speaks out, his courage comes at a price.

Sora strikes an expert tonal balance between the bittersweet and elegiac qualities of end-of-school drama, with a compassionate observation of the coming-of-age process and the volatile microcosm of an educational institution becoming like a prison, pointing to larger political implications in the world outside. The film never loses sight of the personal, engaging us from the start in the experiences of Yuta, Kou, and their friends, while bringing a light but persistent touch to the larger fears that affect us all.

DP Bill Kirstein, who also shot Sora Opushas an elegant eye for composition, finding poetry in the stark cityscapes of an imaginary Tokyo (Happy ending (It was shot mostly in Kobe.) Composer Lia Ouyang Rusli’s score complements that visual grace, also capturing the characters’ youthful energy in techno interludes. The young actors, almost all newcomers, are naturals in a confident film set in the future but fully immersed in the global political anxieties of the present.