Au Revoir l'Eté

The spirit of Eric Rohmer's A Summer's Tale permeates this teasing rites-of-passage film. It keeps shifting its narrative perspective between Fumi Nikaido, who has failed her university entrance exam and goes to spend the summer house-sitting on the coast with her aunt, and Taiga, a young refugee from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, who is working at the "love hotel" managed by his uncle. Confused by the way grown-ups behave, Nikaido hopes that a fling with Taiga will help her refocus on her studies. But he has issues of his own, as he demonstrates during a hilariously non-PC speech at an anti-nuclear rally and when he rails at a hotel guest trying to smuggle in an underage paramour. In his fourth feature, writer/director Koji Fukada shows flashes of Rohmeresque wit. But, for all his allusions to art and politics, he is currently a better image-maker (in conjunction with cinematographer Kenichi Negishi) than a storyteller.