Eiga Sai 2008: "Linda Linda Linda"

Saturday at the movies: "Linda Linda Linda"

Jul 16, '08 1:37 AM
for everyone

On July 12, 2008, a bunch of us J-Club members went to see one of the films being shown on Eiga Sai 2008 and indulged in some girly-girl activites outside of the office.

We agreed to meet up between 11 to 11:30 am at Shangrila mall. I ended up taking a taxi because I thought I would be last however it is good not to rush too much.

Chelle and I met up the graphic novels section of National Bookstore.

Luckily she came in before I could be tempted to buy more books or graphic novels. After we queued for the tickets, and the other girls Grace, Hannah and Alyson arrived, off we went to have lunch at Green Tomato.

Trying to decide among the many dishes of pasta and pizza and the other dishes on the menu, the lunch talk was full of teasing and stories.

Pasta and its sauces and ingredients were varied, with plain OO, tomato-based,  pesto, brandied shrimp, spaghetti, penne, fetuccine etc. while the pizza was for meat-lovers.

Too bad no dessert was on the plate :-(

We had enough time before the 2 pm movie and ended up comfortably ensconced in the middle aisle though we at first kept on moving around due to the "Reserved" signs (which turned out to be disregarded).

Humming "Linda Linda Linda" after the movie was finished, we proceeded to walk around and do some shopping. Some of them apparently were going to go on a run the next day, therefore new running shoes were a must.

Of course, when one walks around with fellow girls, one gets sucked into buying some things too, even if it wasn't on the agenda at the start *looks at credit card dolefully*

Before splitting up and heading home, we also decided to go to Glorietta and have coffee at Gloria Jean's...there was an ulterior motive for that, which I shall not disclose here *wink* but the conversation during that coffee break was like an interview for each of us girls...hehehe...plus some other perks *sticks tongue out*

The Film: Linda Linda Linda

Japanese Title: Rinda Rinda Rinda
Director: Yamashita Nobuhiro
Cast: Bae Doo-na as Song, Maeda Aki as Yamada Kyoko, Kashii Yu as Tachibana Kei, Sekine, Shiori as Shirakawa Nozomi, Mimura Takayo as Marumoto Rinko, Komoto Masahiro
as Teacher Koyama

Synopsis partially taken from  the brochure:

This film about youth is set in modern-day high school just outside of Tokyo. A couple of days just before the school’s culture festival, a girl’s music group is facing a dilemma. They planned on playing an original piece of music but, three days before the festival,
the guitarist appears to have broken her finger and an argument breaks out among the two band members who founded it. They need to find a new guitarist and a new vocalist. While the remaining three girls are pondering who to ask to be the new vocalist, they hear the song, “Linda Linda Linda” by the famous Japanese rock band Blue Hearts and decide they want to sing it instead of an original song.

A Korean exchange student, Song, misunderstood and said yes when they ask her to be their vocalist.  Her Japanese is not perfect, and she’s never sung in front of an audience, but she listens to the song and says yes. The girls practice a lot but they don’t seem to be improving much. They spend a lot of time at Kei’s ex-boyfriend’s studio and at the school practicing late into the night..and with all these practicing a deep friendship develops among the four girls.

The night before the festival, they practice late into the night and exhaust themselves. They suddenly wake up the next morning and realize that they are late for the festival. They arrive at the school just as the festival is finishing and perform as the last act. The audience loves them and the four girls play their hearts out.

Linda Linda Linda was ranked as the 6th best film on the 79th Kinema Junpo best ten list for 2005. Director Yamashita Nobuhiro’s other films, Hazy Life (“Donten Seikatsu,” 2001), No One’s Ark (“Baka no Hakobune, 2002) and Ramblers (“Riarizumu no Yado,” 2003) also deal with the lives of youths.

In Linda Linda Linda, the film uses minimalism and a level-headed approach to convey his ideas to the audience. The Korean character in the film, Song, is played by a Korean actor, Bae Doo-na. She has starred in such Korean films as Park Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Hyeon Nam-Seob’s Saving My Hubby (2002). The actress who plays the role of the bassist, Nozomi, is a real-life musician.

Well, I enjoyed the film. I am not really into drama and I honestly was dreading seeing the films being featured this year as some of the girls had attended the first night of the festival and according to Hannah it was "bloody" (aka dumugo ilong nya or maybe there were bloody scenes?). hehehe...

But this one film was light, youth-oriented, feel-good, enjoyable.

It's simple, direct approach to telling the story is refreshing and the song's tunes and lyrics were catchy too. Makes me wanna see what other Blue Hearts songs are out there.

The film reminds me of "Stand by Me" but on a lesser scale. It is more of a tale of friendship developing between these girls who worked hard so that they could perform in the festival. There are no tricks to how its presented and its strangely fun to see this kind of film these days when those marked as good or blockbuster films (not necessarily exclusive descriptions) we queue for feature either camera tricks, CGI or a bunch of confusing turns in the story. I had a good time watching it with the company I was with.

There were hilarious moments in the film - and when I least expected it! I emitted a couple of giggles in some scenes even if I was busy reading the subtitles. One was when this Japanese boy who apparently had a crush on Song arranged for them to meet so that he could tell her his feelings. Aside from the girls and the boy's friend spying on them, the guy was trying his best to speak in Korean to Song (with matching script or kodigs or cheat sheet pa ha!) of how he felt, and the oblivious Song was answering in her not-so-fluent Japanese.

Another unexpected (somewhat icky!) scene was when Kei was gifted with a hand. Yes, a hand! I thought at first maybe the film had some horror twist when I saw the hand inside a box and being gifted to her on her birthday (?).

It looked real, big and hairy. Urgh!! Enough said. Apparently its because she needs help because her hand was small and she needed a bigger hand to play her guitar. WTF?

Though it was a somewhat rainy day in the end, this Saturday was a nice break from routine.

Instead of having classes, we had played hooky *grin* and watched a movie instead, and got to know each other a little bit more. I felt like a young woman again...este..correction much younger woman..again.