Shinji Sômai
1948 - 2001Somai made made his debut as a director in 1980 with The Terrible Couple - an adaptation of a popular boys' manga of the time. The film deals with the trials and tribulations of adolescence, presaging a long thread of Somai works in which young people are called upon to test their capabilities while discovering the unreliable nature of adult society. In Somai's hands, children and teenagers are always treated and presented sympathetically and seriously.
An actor's director from the start, Somai's trademark was a use of long takes, usually involving constantly-moving and spectacularly sweeping shots, which he felt allowed his cast to achieve the proper mood for scenes which would have been ruined by excessively quick editing. Perhaps the most extraordinary use of this technique is to be found in his 1985 film Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion (one of three of his films released that year), in which Somai uses an apparently single fourteen-minute take to reveal a succession of significant events in one character's childhood.
The best of Somai's films often straddle genres, taking off in unpredictable directions toward stimulating destinations.
Somai directed 13 films between 1980 and 2000. He died of lung cancer at 53.
夏の庭 The Friends
Shinji Sômai
Rentaro Mikuni, Naoki Sakata
A delightful and moving coming-of-age story. One summer, three young boys take an increasing interest in an eccentric old man who lives alone in a house surrounded by an overgrown garden. The boys form a bond with the recluse and set about weeding and replanting the garden.
The Friends
台風クラブ
Shinji Sômai
Youki Kudoh, Yuichi Mikami
Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the five-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly-liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.
Typhoon Club
風花
Shinji Sômai
Tadanobu Asano, Kyoko Koizumi
An alcoholic civil servant wakes up under a cherry tree in Tokyo next to a bar hostess with whom he's impulsively made a suicide pact. Though he's now changed his mind, he agrees to travel with her to Hokkaido, her preferred site for ending it all.
Kaza-hana
雪の断章-情熱-
Shinji Sômai
Yuki Saito, Takaaki Enoki
A young girl gets adopted by a family that holds her like a slave and is later freed by a young man working for the family's company. 10 years later, she gets involved in the murder of one of her step-sisters.
Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion
東京上空いらっしゃいませ
Shinji Sômai
Kiichi Nakai, Riho Makise
A pampered young model is killed in a traffic accident. Given the chance to return to earth, she becomes involved with the advertising executive who is trying to cover up her death. A blend of fantasy and trenchant realism in which Somai uses the ethereal glow of advertising images to comment on the transience of life.
Tokyo Heaven
翔んだカップル
Shinji Sômai
Shingo Tsurumi, Hiroko Yakushimaru
Aspiring to be admitted to a good university and to become a lawyer, Tasiro Yuusuke, a tenth-grader from Kyushu, enrolls in a prestigious high school in Tokyo. Plans are made for him to live in his uncle's house, part of which is rented out while his uncle is abroad on business. A realtor's mistakes leaves Tasiro sharing the house with Kei Yamaba, the most beautiful girl in the school, who is also his classmate. There is the risk that their unexpected 'co-habitation' will be discovered by the school authorities.
Dreamy Fifteen
あ、春
Shinji Sômai
Koichi Sato, Yuki Saito
A salaryman faces a major life change as his firm undergoes financial difficulties. To add to his troubles, a man claiming to be his long-estranged father shows up at his house requesting shelter. One of the best of Somai's seriocomic studies of the messiness of family life.
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