Taifu Club
1985 Directed by Shinji Sômai
Synopsis
The setting is a "new" Tokyo suburb. The school is clean, well run, and the movie takes place in the five-day period before, during and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which five of the students endure while marooned in the school's gymnasium. As the English title is apparently intended to emphasize, "Typhoon Club" is rather like a much more solemn version of John Hughes's "Breakfast Club." One young man, who's obsessed by being and nothingness, is fond of making deep statements on the order of "Death existed before life." Two of the girls are disturbed by sexual longings they don't yet understand. Another young man has an alcoholic father with whom he lives in a shack on the edge of the suburb. One young woman runs away -briefly - to see Tokyo for the first time.
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Popular reviews
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A series of anxiety-inducing vignettes that highlight Somai's stylistic diversity (amazingly slow track-ins, jittery nervous handheld, Asian minimalism TM), while also using the aforementioned techniques to get at not the individual psyches of his characters, but rather the collective sense of frustration/tension/panic that the typhoon is allowing to come out. This means that the characters remain abstract, sure, but their emotions are palpable.
Recent reviews
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A series of anxiety-inducing vignettes that highlight Somai's stylistic diversity (amazingly slow track-ins, jittery nervous handheld, Asian minimalism TM), while also using the aforementioned techniques to get at not the individual psyches of his characters, but rather the collective sense of frustration/tension/panic that the typhoon is allowing to come out. This means that the characters remain abstract, sure, but their emotions are palpable.