I honestly can’t really recall but life probably sucked at fourteen years old. It certainly does in this small independent Japanese film that tracks the lives of a few fourteen year olds in and outside of school as well as a few adults who fall into their troubled orbit. The young director who also acts in the film and was the lead in the equally disturbing “The Soup, One Morning”, shoots the film with a distinct style of very short scenes that bounce around from character to character slowly building a narrative of sorts and a mood of disintegrating disquiet. The kids are all combustible time bombs with pressure squeezing their insides out and the adults are no better as they look at their failed ambitions. It takes a while before you understand who all the characters are and what their relationships are to one another, but once you do the film takes on a fatalistic poignancy that eats away at you.
Here is an excellent review I came across of the film.
My rating for this film: 6.0