Synopsis
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
Where to watch
Lonelyheart
1985 ‘さびしんぼう’ Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
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Alternative Titles
Lonely Heart, Sabishinbô
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Fall in love.
Fall in love with all your might.Viewed with fellow Collaber Ethan Lyon. Check out his review too! This is my 8th Ôbayashi film.
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi has given the world such a unique collection of criminally underseen films. From House to Labyrinth of Cinema, he is a surrealist auteur. Then, his entire 80’s output is incredibly digestible, straight-forward saccharine-soaked melodramas. These parts of the movie spectrum seem so far away from each other, but it really begins to make so much sense how/why Ôbayashi has such a great handle on both. My only equivalent I can offer is that of David Lynch who manages to entangle comedy, bizarre atmospheres and surrealist tendencies throughout his movies, but even then does Obi’s…
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for all that's said about obayashi being a filmmaker who relies primarily on trick film techniques and cinematic reflexivity, few directors possess an equal ability to display the raw, kinetic vitality of teenage bodies.
i can't say if it's true or not, but i've heard that this is kurosawa akira's favorite obayashi film—and that he liked it so much he forced a bunch of his subordinates to go see it. i find that kind of hilarious, but a truth that doesn't get talked about much is that obayashi definitely saw himself in the lineage of (specifically, as a reaction to and divergence from) the classical greats: ozu, mizoguchi, kurosawa. i once heard him talk about how he would sit down…
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The enormous and sweeping effect of first love. It helps us look deep into ourselves and take one of the first steps in understanding who we are. Lonelyheart, amidst all its hilarity and poignancy, is a film that urges us to do just that : look into ourselves, and not let go of who we are once we turn into adults.
Like old photographs, nostalgia takes over us on a visual level. The town of Onomichi is bathed in a golden blanket for eternity. It is endlessly gorgeous; the sloped streets, the inviting houses, the bustling shōtengai, all come together to nurture the atmosphere with a thick cloud of coziness and warmth. It feels like home. More than that, it…
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84/100
100 Years 44/646
Kids are fucken' stupid man. Doing stupid shit because you don't know how to behave, thinking their first love is the one that matters the most, fighting with your parents because they don't get it. Obayashi gets it, and he gets how stupid kids are but he also gets that it's okay and that there's so much beauty in that. The gold-tinted skies, the closeness of your first love, the warmth hanging in the air on a special night. Shit, I'm in love with Obayashi all over again, this is fucken perfect.
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87/100(was an 84/100)
You once loved someone like this, too
There's nothing I can think of that's worth saying, so I won't say anything at all. There isn't a single film that feels the way this one does.
2nd watch
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The golden glow of memory, the waning days of youth as one long magic hour; a film outside of time.
(surely an inspiration for Kafka on the Shore, just...much sweeter)
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7th Nobuhiko Obayashi (after Hausu, School in the Crosshairs; His Motorbike, Her Island; The Little Girl Who Leapt Through Time and The Rocking Horsemen)
As I see more Obayashi, I’m constantly impressed by his generosity of spirit towards teenagers and their emotional worlds. There’s never the sense that he’s looking at them with a derisive snicker as they bumble their way around the vagaries of love and adulthood. He treats them with a warmth and depth that marks his films out as superior expressions of artistry. Lonely Heart is, so far, the best of his films about adolescence that I’ve seen. Initially, it starts in quite a grating tone. The scenery of Onomichi and the milieu of the high school…
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total perfection. a dedication to a time, and to the pain and joy of those times followed by an introduction to the place inseparable from that time: "why is it all nostalgic even to those seeing it for the first time?" (this focus is shown early on: the way that hiroki's voice-over betrays diegesis, jumping from narration looking back from the future to internal monologue in the moment). the best melodramas both recognize that the most brutal emotions are the most fragile, and from that realization work towards communicating them as effectively as possible - I'll say once more, Obayashi was such a succinct dramatist because he understood the sensory, tactile element of emotion that holds the key to cinematic…
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Lonelyheart could well be Obayashi's most visually beautiful films. He captures his beloved hometown, Onomichi, in near permanent golden hour. The sun setting over temples and graveyards. A cat darting across a rooftop. The waterfront sparkling. The shotengai brimming with life. It is like a warm hug. Beyond its visuals, Lonelyheart is just as beautiful in terms of narrative. A story of the loneliness of love and the sweet sadness of getting older, Obayashi has true empathy for all his characters. As the truth of Lonelyheart is slowly revealed (though never over-revealed), I felt my chest tightening and tears welling. This is right up there with his best.
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The more of Nobuhiko Obayashi's films I watch, the more I'm in awe of his style and the scope of the stories that he chooses to tell. But nevertheless all the same visual tricks in the book are there, just as they've always been ever since House and yet looking at the nature of the stories he's telling they only ever feel like they're enhancing what's being shown in the best manner. A movie like Miss Lonely only feels aided all the more by the fact that the imagery, resembling photography captures the nostalgia from having fallen in love for the first time so seamlessly.
And for every moment it's funny, it's very poignant too. I'll be working on diving through more of Obayashi's films soon enough.
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Journeys in Space and Time: Nobuhiko Ōbayashi
Tokyo International Film Festival 2019
Sabishinbou (Miss Lonely)
16mm screening with actors Yasuko Tomita & Nenji Kobayashi
"Falling in love makes me lonely"
The obscure Onomichi trilogy (I Are You, You Am Me - The Little Girl Who Conquered Time - Miss Lonely) finally becomes finished. Starring the heart-melting Yasuko Tomita as both the mysterious Miss Lonely and the ghost mime-looking younger version of the main character's mother... who's in love with him? Call to Freud about this mystery and leave it to Ōbayashi to make a juvenile high school comedy about raunchy parrots, big tanuki balls and foolish pranks, and turn it in the end more and more into a wistful…
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Still just the best thing ever.
Simultaneously one of Ōbayashi's funniest and saddest films, with each of those emotions lying almost entirely in their respective halves. The slice-of-life stuff is some of his best work, completely entrancing and relatable. The soft, amber filter over the town of Onomichi along with all of the other textural stylizations here make these lighthearted moments resonate deeper than you'd ever expect (certainly hit me harder this time around). The dialogue is wonderfully authentic, and it's as easy as ever to get completely lost in the rich, beautiful world Ōbayashi has created. A ton of laugh-out-loud moments as well, generally really lovely.
As for the latter half, it's also some of the best work the…