THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
Trained at the Japanese film and animation series studio Madhouse, director Atsuko Ishizuka collaborated on numerous productions before being able to claim a feature film entirely written and directed by her. Released in Japan in February 2022 and selected a few months later at the Annecy Festival, Good-bye submits to the exercise that has become almost routine for a first film: the initiatory story. It is carried here by three rather solitary young boys, Roma, Toto and Drop, suddenly forced to travel together for one summer. The journey will take them from the deep forests of Japan to the glaciers of Iceland, from adolescence to adulthood.
To this hackneyed theme, Atsuko Ishizuka brings an imagination nourished by tales and legends which she restores in an impressionistic way, through pictorial decorations drawn like old engravings which bring us back to the mists of time. And who thus oppose the characters – these contemporary figures sketched out in the typical way of manga –, on the contrary frail and unstable, constantly tossed about, jostled by events. The main quality of the film, from which it draws its evocative power and its beauty, lies in this gesture which manages to unite, in the same picture, the immutable and the fragility of youth in the making. To first confront them before reconciling them.
The only son of a farming couple living in the Kanto region of Japan, Roma, a 15-year-old schoolboy, hardly seeks the company of others. His best friend, Toto, a bit older than him and from a wealthy family, has been studying for a year at an elite school in Tokyo. When the film begins, it’s time for happy reunions. The second being back in the native village for the holidays, the two friends palaver deep in the woods, in the cabin which serves as their headquarters. The topic of the day? The organization of annual fireworks. A newcomer, Drop, a teenager with outspokenness and communicative enthusiasm, joins them. The trio thinks big and decides to buy a drone to film their show. The rockets are installed in the middle of a field. Everything is ready.
Fundamentals
Alas, when the time comes, everything goes wrong: the rockets are defective, the drone is carried by the wind to the mountain, and a fire breaks out in the forest. Main suspects, the teenagers decide to go in search of the drone, the only one who can prove their innocence. An adventure begins, a pretext for both geographical and mental exploration, the discovery of unknown landscapes and their dangers holding up the mirror to unexplored areas of the unconscious. The teenagers gradually abandon their frivolity in favor of a seriousness which progressively monopolizes the aesthetics of the film, through an increasingly grandiose, omnipotent, real and almost fantastic nature.
You have 14.86% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.