After school special

Typhoon Club (1985) (d. Shomai Shinji)

It’s an atypical coming of age flick. Apparently none of the teenage protagonists learn from what are supposedly life-changing experiences. It’s a relief to see such unsentimentally in the genre even if the teens sentimentally promise to meet up after the tumultuous night stuck in the high school.

The main problem with the film is that it keeps punching down, right up to the very end. The most self-righteous figure is given an undignified farewell. The main antagonists in the film are too milquetoast to be real adversaries and they have too little power or prospects in life to be the object of criticism, which is why I think the film fails to be critical enough. For instance, one of the kids go on fully dissing the schoolteacher. Honestly though, he isn’t the one in charge. If you want to go after the man, go after the principal, the mayor, the prime minister; what counts as authority, in the film’s thinking, is rather juvenile. It doesn’t go after the real bad guys.

It is a world without parents. The shotgun wife doesn’t even have a father meanwhile kids are running around during a typhoon and none of the parents are concerned enough to be making calls? The film tries to be different to varying degrees of success. It has a lesbian coupling, but it’s coming from a male hetero point of view. It has a disturbingly extended scene of a young man attempting to rape his female classmate. There is not enough motivation for the character to merit such a sequence. It’s pure sexist spectacle. There’s also a long shot of young teenage women in underwear that is rendered too far enough and hazy enough not to be labeled exploitative even though that’s what is exactly happening.

Reportedly the film was made towards the end of the legendary run of the ATG. And in its final gasps, it did not seem to be able to say anything of importance like the dragged out scene of the hero character rearranging desks and chairs for his final act of heroism–perhaps reflective of the indie studio’s last days. The final minute of the movie is somewhat significant: the rectangular iris looks like a coffin.

#2108 #September