After viewing the saucy Pinku Female Teacher:Dirty Afternoon (1981-also reviewed) last night,I took a look for other Japanese titles with a short run time in my "To watch" pile. Finding this movie at the very end of the 1969 movies lined up to be played,I got set to meet the student.
Note:Some spoilers in review.
The plot:
In the final days before the end of high school, three high school girls decide to disrupt proceedings by stealing the graduation certificates and taking them to a remote mountain where they shall also live. Wanting to escape from the system of modern society by creating their own, the three pupils soon find their plans disrupted,when soldiers appear over the mountainside.
View on the film:
Leaving film making behind in the 70's to join the armed militant/terrorist organization the Japanese Red Army, writer/directing auteur Masao Adachi & cinematographer Hideo Ito ignite the school rebellion in a stark Japanese New Wave (JNW) stylisation,cutting the ground in raw black and white, trimmed by restrained wide-shots glimpsing the utter wilderness. Backed by a pitch-perfect unnerving, stray instruments score by Meikyu Sekai, Adachi carves the film with small splinters of colour lighting the battle that the girls want to win.
Stating near the end of the film that the battle was too small, the excellent screenplay by Adachi takes a clinical dissection on patriarchal insistence within leftist movements aimed at social disruption The pure revolutionary vision the girls have eventual is torn apart by male jocks looking to enjoy something hip,and the bruised egos of soldiers, (who the women have sex with in coldly shot scenes) who want to unleash their brittle masculinity on the students over a small battle.
