RIKU HAGIWARA, YUUMI KAWAI IN SHE TAUGHT ME SERENDIITY

AKIKO OHKU: SHE TAUGHT ME SERENDIPITY (2025) JAPAN CUTS 2025

Pining for love in Kyoto

Director Akiko Ohku's films on the young and lonely have a following in Japan, and this is the latest. (I previously reviewed the 2020 Hold Me Back 私をくいとめて(NYAFF 2020). This time the central character is a guy, college junior Konishi (Riku Hagiwara), who looks tall and rangy but itsn't handsome. This film is about his relation to two women, so this is't unlike the other films. But it does revolve around Konishi. Is this a rom-com? Sort of, for a while. But it's also maybe more than that about being odd and lonely and somehow overcoming that, and grieving. Konishi does some specatcular grieving. The Japanese hold back emotion, but when they let it out, wow. This film is a little bit strange, a little bit long, but has several monologues only the hard-hearted would resist.

Konishi is coming back to his Kyoto U. classes after a long abence; later we learn why he was gone. He has two friends there. The human one is Yamane (Kodai Kurosaki), a cheerful, wavy-haired guy who wears his own unique stylish looks. When Konishi doubts the reality of the girlfriend he talks about now having, this threatens to cause a rift. The other friend is Sakura, the university dog Konishi loves to hug. He has his protective eccentricity, walking with an umbrella open even on sunny days.

At a big lecture Konishi spots Sakurada (Yuumi Kawai), a loner girl with a big top knot, which turns out to be her protective eccentricity. He first connects by leaving class early and asking her to check out for him, as others have done. Then they chat, then they have breakfast at a quaint little spot three times. They go to an acquarium together and in its deep romantic azure glow they learn they've both been knocked for a loop by grieving. Later she reveals whe was a Hikkomori, an extreme recluse. But what is her feeling toward Konishi? She says their conneciton is "serendipitous," and refers him to the book that comes from. Anyway like him she has a parttime job. Hers is at a snack shop.

His job is cleaning a public bath after hours and his coworker is the petite, sprightly Sacchan (Aoi Ito), who's also a musician. They have good times, but so far only at work, and walking home afterward. From time to time Konishi talks to the bath boss Sasaki (gnarly veteran Arata Furuta, who adds flavor later on).

At the one-hour poiht of this two-hour film Konishi and Sacchan are walking home at night and, standing at a distance to say goodnight, Sacchan, who has learned vry well now about Konishi's new thing with Sakurada, delivers a stunninbg 8-minute-long speech of hitherto unexpressed and unrequited love for Konishi that turns the whole film around. It's no longer a light, quirky rom-com about young misfits who tentatively find each other but something a lot deeper and more, belatedly, articulate. This is the last we see of Sacchan.

But she is not by any means forgotten. In fact Sacchan looms over the whole second half, which seems to slow down, as Konishi's love life also begins to seem increasingly imaginar, or surreal. The length of this film in relation to the relative paucity of scenes and developments is an indication that it's a little awkward in shape, perhaps difficulty in adapting the transitions of the source novel by Shusuke Fukutoku. Nonetheless, besides its acknowledgment of the origin of the word "serendipity" in a book The Three Princes of Serendip, this film also deserves credit for taking youthful rom-com material to some deeper emotional places.

She Taught Me Serendipity 『今日の空が一番好き、とまだ言えない僕は』 ("I still cant say that I like todayi's sky the best"), 127 mins., premiered Tokyo Oct. 29, 2024 and received a Variety review by Rchard Kuipers and a review in The Japan Times review by Mark Schilling. Screened for this review as part of the July 10-20, 2025 Japan Cuts.
Showtme:
Saturday, July 12, 2025
6:30 pm

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.