Why has lo-fi music become ubiquitous in relaxation contexts? In part, it’s because the simple digital arrangements don’t demand attention: because they are unpolished, they give the listener permission to zone out. At the same time, there’s a poignance to the form’s often short, hazily evocative tracks. They will never be anything more than they are, and invite the listener to live in the moment.
Despite writer/director Hiroshi Okuyama’s high-fidelity cinematography, My Sunshine has a lo-fi appeal: cozy, yet yearning. The 100-minute feature is full of long close-ups and extended ice-skating sequences, inviting contemplation rather than cogitation.
The movie is so gentle, in fact, that at the halfway mark, viewers may wonder if the plot is going to have any conflict at all. A tween boy (Keitatsu Koshiyama) wants to switch from hockey to figure skating? His supportive parents say go for it. His coach (Sôsuke Ikematsu) wants to pair the boy with a much more experienced girl (Kiara Takanashi) as an ice dancing duo? She’s down.
Even the hockey team’s mockery is good-natured in the warm glow Okuyama brings to the icy setting of wintertime Hokkaido. The light pouring through the ice rink windows is so heavenly, Patrick Swayze’s Ghost character would fit right in as canteen manager, serving miso soup in hand-thrown mugs.
Reality does eventually intrude in a conflict linked to both the confusion of youth and a larger social tension. The most interesting choice Okuyama makes is not to explore that conflict between indicating what happens and, in broad strokes, why. Whether the coach is hurt by the nature of the tension in his dream team, we’re left to surmise. To all indications, he and his wronged skater take the situation philosophically.
The scant information we receive about how, exactly, the characters process this development is a missed opportunity — but, like a lo-fi arrangement, it’s also an aesthetic.
For the young, life choices must be made with limited wisdom; as adults, we understand more but our choices become more constrained. A decision made by one of the young skaters forces a momentous choice for the coach, who seems to accept that this is the cost of intertwining one’s fate with the whims of an adolescent.
Beyond that recognition of the tension inherent in a sport where young aspirants must be intensively coached by veterans one-on-one, My Sunshine is a rosier depiction of figure skating than anything you’ll find in documentary films or Olympic memoirs. It’s not precisely correct to say My Sunshine sentimentalizes the sport, but it does argue skating has a beauty that goes beyond superficial splendor.
Superficially, My Sunshine is a beautiful film. There’s more below the surface, but Okuyama doesn’t spell it out: he lets you decide for yourself what might be there. For some viewers, that will be frustrating. For others, it will be freeing.
Images courtesy Film Movement
Leave a Reply