The Japanese seem to be cornering the market in dystopian near-futures, and Happyend is another one. But if it’s not exactly happy, it is at least wryly amusing and not like some other futuristic films shown at Richmond - hopelessly gloomy (Plan 75) or over-the-top violent (Battle Royale).

 

A debut fiction feature by Neo Sora, the son of composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, Happyend is a low-key Japanese drama about friendship, revolt and standing up to the surveillance state. “The systems that define people are crumbling in Japan,” opening titles notify us at the start of Neo Sora’s feature.

 

While the film was largely shot in Kobe, the setting is Tokyo in the near future, the city menaced by the prospect of imminent earthquakes. The government is using this situation, invoking the matter of public safety, to crack down on opposition in a way that many citizens regard as opening the door to tyranny.

 

After a spectacular prank is played at school involving the principal’s new car, new facial recognition surveillance equipment is installed that automatically penalises students with points, leading to absurd and arbitrary punishments.

The sense of authoritarian over-reach extends from the streets to inside the local high school, where the halls have been adorned with the latest surveillance technology to keep the students in line.

 

As a satire, Happyend is not so much a cautionary tale as a state of the union address, with the director continuously jabbing at his country’s innate encroaching conservatism, while also highlighting universal adolescent anxieties about their futures. What keeps things engaging and ultimately moving are the committed performances of the young actors, especially

Inori, while the film asks serious questions about the best way to carry out political opposition in today’s climate.

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Steve Karpel