The Summer Yuki Gave Up Rock Music

Singer Yuki has broken up with her manager Toshi (`musical differences’) and hitches up with Hirooka instead. There’s a longstanding rivalry between the two men: Hirooka used to be in Toshi’s own band. When Toshi makes bookings for Yuki regardless, Hirooka hires some right-wing thugs to beat him up. Toshi’s gay friend Max tries to get back at Yuki and Hirooka; his example inspires the jilted Kiriko to finish the job… As Nagasaki himself commented, it’s as if they’re all looking for summer in the middle of winter. This early indie feature (which stars a very young Naito Takeshi as Toshi) is Nagasaki’s take on the Vitelloni syndrome: it chronicles the moment when a group of friends break up and go their separate ways. As in a classic noir, frustration and disappointment breed anomie and violence, but Nagasaki goes deeper into the dance of humiliation, sadism, betrayal and emotional cruelty than even Joseph H. Lewis would have dared. It’s the gay character Max, constantly shooting Super-8 and dreaming of leaving for Beirut, who sets the tone: holed up in his ‘secret room’, nurturing his unrequited love for Toshi, fantasising a link between the ocean and the ‘angry sea’ in his mind. (TR)