Synopsis
It's you, I'm in my teens!
Summer Vacation tells the story of four teenage students who spend their summer vacation at school – unsupervised and untouched by the outside world.
Summer Vacation 1999
1988 ‘1999年の夏休み’ Directed by Shusuke Kaneko
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Alternative Titles
世紀末暑假, 1999 - Nen no natsu yasumi, 世纪末暑假, 1999년의 여름방학
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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Japan
Releases by Country
Japan
26 Mar 1988
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
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soft focus fantasy set in a genderless retrofuture at a deserted boarding school in the middle of the forest. full of flowing nightgowns and billowing white curtains, sun streaming over dewy meadows and a vaguely supernatural he/they love quadrangle. great mood........ one of the dreamiest movies ever released on VHS
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Futuristic by 10 years (which allows for some really fascinating tech props), but simultaneously looks like early 1900s Europe (very Picnic at Hanging Rock, as Sean pointed out). Mysterious and dreamlike even in its most mundane moments, and love the gender-bending casting. Sadly almost had this gorgeous, tender movie ruined by the most obnoxious audience I've ever encountered 🫠
35mm.
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I feel tremendously privileged and grateful to have seen this singularly sweet, special movie twice on 35mm, even if both times it was in the company of the most obnoxious audience in the world.
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Maybe the finest adaptation of Hesse’s Demian we’ll ever get? It’s toying with some very interesting ideas re: childhood as a time of simultaneous freedom and confinement; moreover, and perhaps more intriguingly, it explores the multiple meanings of the memory of childhood, which is sometimes functionally a death wish and at other times a source of strength and hope. All of these ideas are rather inchoately staged, and I’d need a second viewing to parse them better, but that very incohateness is a natural consequence of the subject. The androgynous boys behave less like discrete personalities and more like different facets of the same consciousness at different stages of maturity; and the convoluted, tonally slippery narrative that arises between them seems to…
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On struggling to emerge from your shell in the company of others whilst drowning in repressive thoughts of reciprocity and haunting loss in the form of a ghost made flesh. What did the hurt you inflicted do? You'll always remember and feel what this remembrance evokes. Love is only as good as its existence in the eyes of those unwilling to accept it, therefore it is merely self-made fallacy paired with longing, loneliness and pangs of covetous jealousy that go hand-in-hand with spurious catalyst in a should-be textbook idyll. Time won't stop in the presence of another, nor will feelings change with the passage of time. You'll resort to what you will to get what you want, yet indignance can only set you on the path toward a world in which emotional compasses spin out of control in pursuit of those who were once here.
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Love and friendship in a specific vacation during a specific time. Inspired casting. This has a little trouble pinpointing it's focus on the topics at hand. Hard to define dreams. Sitting near the waterfall with a rabbit. Surprising use of well-detailed futuristic technology. But then something repeats, all of a sudden.
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Imported 35mm Print. Summer Vacation 1999 brims with a mesmerizing and mystical evocation of youth, existing in a world unto itself. A loose adaptation of Moto Hagio’s legendary shojo manga The Heart of Thomas scripted by longtime Terayama collaborator Rio Kishida, Shusuke Kaneko’s reworking casts a group of young actresses in the roles of schoolboys, the only occupants of an all-boys boarding school during summer break. Haunted by the recent suicide of a schoolmate, the group finds itself in disbelief when a new occupant arrives—one who uncannily resembles their dead classmate. A confrontation of life and death, dispersed into a world of light, of illusion, of truth and fantasy—Kaneko’s lush and androgynous work is imbued with a timeless essence, recalling the unforgettable occurrences of a summer past.
Screening on Friday, March 22nd as part of Kinema Essentials
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The tragedy of Peter Pan is that he will never be able to experience the complex emotions of adulthood. The joys of adolescence can only thrive within the bubble of memory where time is permanently frozen. The film's setting can best be described as a sort of Neverland. Without adult supervision the boys are free to govern themselves and are able to make their emotions bare. The world created by the complete absence of life is a dreamy approximation of futuristic computers and phones in deliberate contrast with the vaguely western styled boarding school. Not quite a ghost story, not quite science fiction, and not quite fantasy. But floating somewhere within those areas.
Melodramatic in that emotions carry tangible repercussions;…
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Grateful to Japan Society for tracking down a rare 35mm print and BAM for screening it as part of a queer film fest series -- it was wonderful to watch with a somewhat rowdy but very engaged audience of mostly younger queer folks.