Coming-of-age films are usually optimistic, but sometimes, growing up isn’t as rosy as portrayed to be, as kids start to learn the failings of the adults that should know better and the tension that lies between sexes. Typhoon Club is like an anti-Breakfast Club, with the kids stuck in school overnight, not just one morning, due to a natural typhoon instead of randomly assigned detentions, and with the kids returning home traumatized instead of triumphant. Director Shinji Sōmai crafts a raw, turbulent experience, alternating between before, during, and after their stay that steadily heightens the uneasy, sometimes dangerous, experiences where these teenagers directly confront the disappointment that is adulthood. It’s a challenging film to watch, but Typhoon Club’s early exploration of teen ennui made it to be considered one of the best Japanese films ever made.
"The typhoon that these schoolmates use an excuse not to go home also serves as an objective correlative for their raging, potentially dangerous emotions, as death makes its first encroachment on their not-so-innocent lives."
— Anton Bitel
Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the 5-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.
When a typhoon strikes their provincial town, one junior high school student is stranded in Tokyo, while her classmates are stranded in their school, fending for themselves and letting loose their pent-up frustrations.
Halfway through the film, there’s a scene of a boy chasing down a girl in a horror-esque sequence that can be triggering for some folks. Each kick of the door is terrifying.
The Breakfast Club’s troubled cousin.
Berlin
1 nomination
