Himizu

In the rubble of Japan's March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, director Sion Sono found the perfect backdrop for a story about shattered lives. Himizu adapts Minoru Furuya's manga into a film that feels both intimate and apocalyptic. It follows Yuichi Sumida (Shota Sometani), a 14-year-old running a lakeside boat rental business while his alcoholic mother drifts in and out and his father shows up only to demand money and hurl abuse. The property is surrounded by tents where elderly tsunami refugees have taken shelter, adding a layer of communal desolation to Yuichi's personal nightmare.

Into this bleak world walks Keiko Chazawa (Fumi Nikaido), a classmate who has plastered her bedroom walls with Yuichi's mundane pronouncements about the virtues of ordinariness. She declares herself his stalker and refuses to leave, even after he slaps her. Keiko's own home is no refuge: her mother is building a gallows with a noose in the living room, expecting her daughter to use it. The two teenagers cling to each other as everything around them crumbles, their story weaving together crime thriller elements, dark comedy, and raw psychological drama.

Shot with handheld cameras on a tight budget, Himizu premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, where Sometani and Nikaido shared the Marcello Mastroianni Award for emerging talent. The title means mole in Japanese, a metaphor for Yuichi's wish to hide underground and live unnoticed. The film earned $1.2 million worldwide and holds a 94% Tomatometer score, praised for its emotional intensity and audacious tonal shifts. [edit]

Yuichi Sumida is a 14-year-old boy with a single ambition: to live an ordinary life. He runs his family's small rental boat business beside a nondescript lake, surrounded by makeshift tents where elderly earthquake refugees have taken shelter on his property. His mother brings home different men and eventually abandons him entirely. His father appears only to demand money, once drunkenly telling Yuichi I wish you were dead. The yakuza pressure the boy to pay off his father's gambling debts.

Keiko Chazawa, a classmate, openly declares herself Yuichi's stalker. She has covered her bedroom walls with sheets of paper containing his banal pronouncements about ordinariness. Despite Yuichi's violent rejection, she clings to him with relentless optimism. Keiko's own home is equally horrifying: her mother is building a gallows with a noose, expecting Keiko to hang herself when it is completed.

Yuichi's dream of normalcy shatters under the weight of his father's abuse, yakuza threats, and the burden of running a business alone. A cast of eccentric neighbors living in tents, including Shozo Yoruno, Kaneko, and Maa-kun, form a comically hammed-up surrogate family, offering moments of dark humor and unexpected warmth. A yakuza boss and a lanky pickpocket named Teruhiko further complicate Yuichi's life.

Recurring motifs weave through the film: Mozart's Requiem accompanies scenes of post-tsunami debris in Yuichi's dreams, and lines from 15th-century French poet François Villon's Ballade are recited as a refrain. Yuichi's teacher lectures about being unique and fulfilling dreams, but Yuichi shouts back, Being ordinary is best. As tragedy forces him to the edge of insanity, apocalyptic visions haunt him, and the line between survival and destruction blurs.[edit]