Boys Love

The information and the photo is NOT from the movie Boys Love, but from Boys Love 2, theatrical edition, aka Schoolboy Crush. Boys Love is from 2006 but the synopsis is also wrong. Boys Love, the first film released in 2006, tells the story of Taishin Mamiya, a magazine editor who meets and interviews a young model, Noeru Kisaragi, and becomes attracted to him. Their love, however, is forbidden. The tagline of the movie is "All we did was love each other, but...our love is forbidden. Why is it a 'sin'"? Plot Just doing his job, magazine editor Taishin Mamiya (Yoshikazu Kotani) interviews high school model Noeru Kisaragi (Takumi Saito). Despite Noeru's bad attitude, an enchanting picture of the ocean he draws leads Mamiya to invite him out for dinner after-wards. They connect at the restaurant, but while in the bathroom there Noeru solicits Mamiya sexually. The next morning, Noeru's office calls the magazine office where Mamiya works. "Your editor was rude. Have him come and apologize." When Mamiya goes to Noeru's house to deliver the apology, he sees Noeru with a dirty-looking man. Mamiya is shocked to discover at that moment that his interest in Noeru goes beyond article research—he truly wants to know more about him.

This film seems to have been a cross between Romeo & Juliet and some of the most popular Yaoi Manga.

Our protagonist is a young reporter/editor who meets and falls for a popular model/painter/school-boy who is dealing with some childhood abandonment issues by being promiscuous.

Unfortunately there's a another school-boy in love with our promiscuous model who is ignored until a very foreseeable end comes about.

As with most Japanese films that I've seen, I'm not sure what's realistic and what is stylized. The plot is presented largely in flashback but attempts to maintain the element of mystery. Presenting scenes out of order and allowing the audience to fill in blanks in the back-story is a well-established way of engaging the audiences interest and to some degree it works here.

The actors were certainly attractive enough and the skin scenes were titillating but I would have enjoyed learning more about what was going on below those beautiful surfaces.

Also the production values were wildly uneven. Obviously great care and effort went into picking out some wonderful locations (particularly the pool and the aquarium themed restaurant) but the artwork that was supposedly done by the model/artist/schoolboy was barely refrigerator door quality.

Also the subtitling frequently suffered from white on white washout. The picture might have been better served by a black border with subtitles below.

Unfortunately by the film's conclusion I was still uncertain how much of what had been portrayed was poor film making or was poor cultural understanding on my part and the story wasn't strong enough to overcome these flaws.

I found that I didn't really care for these characters enough to really recommend this film.

The acting and writing are both pretty bad. Lots of things happen, with amateur over-acting, for no apparent reason. In fact, US daytime soap operas might even be considered an improvement over this. Consider the recent "Nuke" storyline on As the World Turns.

The casting doesn't make a lot of sense. The interviewer is more attractive than the supposed model he interviews. He also appears to be the same age or even younger, despite having graduated and attained some level of experience in the workforce. This is merely the film's biggest flaw.

The music and other sound work is plainly very cheap. You'll laugh when punches start being thrown.

Knowing that the film couldn't stand on its own, it is peppered with short statements on love, almost like the film is supposed to be some mathematical proof, with each scene justified by some dead guy's words. It's supposed to convince you that the film is making some grand contribution to cinema, but it doesn't cover up how bad the film is.

The ending is inexplicable and assumes the worst about one character (who is only in the film to provide this moment) while being very harsh to another.

On the positive side, the sets, which I assume were just places they found, were appealing. That was probably the best part of the film.

The title and the description- tormented young artist falls for straight laced reporter- made me expect the common Boys' Love clichés. Anyone familiar with this particular genre of manga/anime/games knows that it is a far cry from reality, in fact, it is deliberately escapist and more often than not it only recycles the exact same elements to the point one knows exactly what will happen beforehand. In other words: it harbors few surprises or innovations.

'Boys Love', however, is not so. Surprisingly enough it does go in-depth into the characters' relationship without exploiting it for kinky purposes. There is a lot of angst but it is for the most part justified. The quotes about love that frame scenes and the overly present soundtrack do detract from the overall appreciation of the movie but the essential structure is not greatly affected.

It has a certain psychological realism that highlights the dangers of obsession and the redemptive power of love without falling off the deep end of cheesiness galore as tends to happen all too often in this kind of movie. Perhaps staying true to Boys Love as a genre there is something of a disconnect between the very real social context in which homosexuality is far from tolerated and the movie's universe. It is not complete, there are hints of it throughout the story, but it is underplayed considerably. And as it tends to be the case with Japanese works about the subject, the idea of sexual orientation is not even mentioned as such. Which allows for the movie to unfold as a love story first and foremost, of the very personal kind, and not a commentary on society. In a way this approach (again, somewhat prevalent in Japanese productions) is refreshing since it gives space for the relationship proper to occupy in the narrative but in another way it strikes one as highly artificial when taken too far.

The end is both moving and low key in execution which might be for the best. After all there is not much artistry to this movie and its strongest points rely on its sincerity of delivery.