Director Shinji Somai is well known in Japan but largely forgotten elsewhere. His films are however of a high quality. Maybe his early death in 2001 at the age of 53 or the fact that his films are somewhere in between arthouse and commercial mainstream has contributed to his fall into oblivion.
Fortunately the Filmmuseum Amsterdam re-released three of his films recently. Like many other Somai films they portray youthful characters. In "P. P. Rider" (1983) and "Typhoon club" (1985, a darker version of "The breakfast club" (also 1985, John Hughes)) the young characters are of high school age. In "Moving" (1993) the young character has the age of elementary school. "P. P. Rider" and "Typjoon club" were only shown in Amsterdam, "Moving" got a nationwide re-release.
"Moving" is seen through the eyes of Renko, whose parents are in the early stages of divorce. There are other films about divorce. "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979, Robert Benton) is seen largely from the points of view of the parents while in "Loveless" (2017, Andrey Zvyagintsev) the boy is a rather passive victim of the divorce.
Renko is a victim in the sense that she misses her father, but she is anything but passive. In the film she runs (away) a lot. On the one hand to get rid of her frustration, on the other hand to give her parents a a shared problem that might bring them closer together again. It is up to the viewer to decide which of the two interpretations he/she chooses.
The brilliancy of the film resides however towards the end, when the film quit suddenly changes from rather down to earth to somewhat mythical. This ending is situated during a Japanese fire festival. I suspect I would have liked the second half of the film even more woud I have known more about the meaning of this festival. Even without this knowledge however the sudden shift to magical realism was great in itself.
