HAPPYEND

THREE STARS Japanese students take politics into their own hands when surveillance technology arrives at their high school.

DRAMA JAPAN Japanese #HAPPYEND Starring Hayato Kurihara, Yukito Hidaka

Neo Sora’s feature debut HAPPYEND unfolds in a recognisable near-future Japan where teenage restlessness rubs awkwardly against an increasingly watchful society. It opens with a clutch of high-school friends on the brink of graduation, bored, cheeky - they sneak their way into a techno club - before the story slips into murkier, more unsettling terrain - the police shut it down.

On one hand, the government is cracking down on social freedoms, whilst at the same time, after a prank involving the principal’s new car, the school installs facial-recognition software that deducts 'behaviour points' from its students. What begins as youthful mischief curdles into quiet rebellion, a shift so subtle you almost don’t notice it. The idea is simple but pointed: when surveillance passes for guidance, what happens to the line of separation?

Visually, HAPPYEND is slick and composed, all smooth surfaces and cool ‘Black Mirror’ restraint. Cinematographer Bill Kirstein builds a convincing, slightly askew environment where technology hums softly in the background, neither hero nor villain. It’s beautifully controlled, like Sora’s direction, but perhaps a little too much so. The film’s studied minimalism has a habit of holding the audience at arm’s length, frustrating our engagement.

The young cast carry the emotional weight with understated ease. Yuta and Kou, best friends whose paths start to diverge, provide the film’s fragile heartbeat. Yuta plays the joker, Kou leans toward quiet conviction, and together they sketch out a convincing portrait of adolescence teetering between self-preservation and defiance.

Sora touches on identity, conformity, and moral courage, particularly through Kou’s experience as part of Japan’s Korean minority and again when his friends stage a sit-in, holding the principal hostage. But the film’s purposeful drift can leave it floating in its own ambiguity. The pacing, too, could use a jolt: Sora’s measured observation tips into languid, and at over two hours, dries out long before the end.

Yet HAPPYEND remains a confident debut as Sora lets his ideas seep in, drop by deliberate drop. The result is a film that’s easy to admire but harder to love, and just detached enough to keep you wondering if that’s the point.

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