‘My Sunshine’: Cannes Review

Dir/scr: Hiroshi Okuyama. Japan. 2024. 91mins

My Sunshine is a deceptively sweet little heartwarmer that eventually cuts deeper. The second feature from director Hiroshi Okuyama sensitively charts the bond between two young ice skaters, and there is a definite Billy Elliot vibe to the mix of personal challenges and demanding training routines. Then it unexpectedly shifts gear, quietly confronting Japanese attitudes towards masculinity and homosexuality. The combination of sweet and sour creates an offbeat film that should win more admirers for Okuyama, whose debut feature Jesus (2018) won the New Director award at San Sebastian. Art House Films will distribute in France.

A deceptively sweet little heartwarmer that eventually cuts deeper

Schoolboy Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) is not cut out for sport. A shy dreamer with a stammer, he always appears at a slight distance from the other boys in his school. As the seasons change, he ignores an easy baseball catch to savour the first snow flakes landing on his skin. During the subsequent ice-hockey season, he is stuck in goal and only likely to save a shot if he is struck by the puck. He is also distracted by elegant figure skater Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi), who is being coached by former champion Hisashi Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu) who has returned from Tokyo to this sleepy island backwater.

Okuyama, who also serves as cinematographer and editor, has created a very handsome film. The changing of the seasons creates a winter wonderland of snow-filled landscapes and frozen lakes that look like vintage Christmas card scenes. Okuyama is also unafraid to embrace cliche. When Takuya stands entranced by Sakura’s skating, her confident, gliding swirls are captured in slow-motion. He makes repeated use of Debussy’s ‘Clair De Lune’ on the soundtrack. The film’s look is backlit and soft-focus, pushing ever closer to shameless sentimentality.

Takuya’s interest eventually prompts Arakawa to start coaching him and suggest the couple might have a future together as ice skating dancers. All the swooning enthusiasm culminates in a trip to a frozen lake where the two pupils and their coach grow closer. Training, perfecting routines and just fooling around in the snow and ice are captured in a montage set to ’Going Out Of My Head’ by The Zombies. It is a day of pure happiness that seems too good to last – and so it proves.

Arakawa’s return from Tokyo has always hinted at a backstory to come, and that dominates the final third of the film. Okuyama’s initial story is appealing, so delicately pitched and attuned to childhood emotions that it has faint echoes of Lukas Dhont’s Close (2022).  He has an eye for mirroring. Takuya stands stock still as he watches Sakura; later, she is the one in a similar position feeling jealous as she watches the coach give Takuya his undivided attention. The similarities between the boy and the coach are suggested in the way they start to align their body language.

My Sunshine initially seems quite simple and overly sentimental, but there are more subtle undercurrents. The change in tone almost forces you to reconsider what has come before. Was Okuyama deliberately making events seem too good to be true or at least too joyful to last? Sakura may have harboured a crush on Arakawa, while Arakawa’s fresh start with his boyfriend was always doomed by the prejudices of others. It is a film that makes you think and reconsider as events build to a melancholic, low-key ending, underlying that nothing precious lasts and special moments should be cherished.