Recommend coming of age movies to me!

One Million Yen Girl

Many comments on the movie were about how the film is “merely a generic self-finding trip”. Is that really true? Maybe this “go out to different places and find love” thing is a typical theme in movies, but it certainly is not in other fields. Literature has its Bildungsroman but those types of coming of age stories are rarely related to travels, in anime I remember one single title with something like “self-finding”, namely “Honey & Clover”. Here is what I think: Every road movie is somewhat special, and “One Million Yen Girl”, by virtue of being a Japanese road movie, is rather different from most movies I have seen.

Most of all, I think the premise is lovely. The first and second stops she makes (beach and peach village) were very interesting, although I wished they had shown more of it. In fact, I think I wished they had shown more of it. Why did she not like the beach? What exactly did she get from the next place? The movie is a little bit like “Lost in Translation” where all we see is that the main character is lost, and I don’t actually feel like she grew that much, except at the very end, which is witty and great but feels almost out of character. Unlike “Miryang”, another movie heavily focused on the main character, I didn’t actually get the impression that we learned so much about Suzuko. Specifically, the story could have been more developed, perhaps into a miniseries and it could have turned into something like Kino no Tabi.

I love Aoi Yuu, especially with this movie, I have to say that she is one of Japan’s best actresses, and I think she also is much better than Rinko Kikuchi (who, I think, is overrated). Sure, she always gets these awfully Japanese roles where she has to smile awkwardly and look demure – but in many ways, she reminded me of Scarlett Johansson in “Lost in Translation”, which can only be a good thing. Aoi Yuu is amazing at looking gentle and sweet and so incredibly lonely, and she needs to get more appreciation for that.

Unfortunately, however, I don’t really like the idea of the movie. I have been thoroughly annoyed at the last part of the story, which was supposed to be some love story, but with an awfully boring and generic guy. I much preferred the guy from the beach shop! So what if he had blonde hair? He was cute and seemed so serious and honest and genki. The last part of the film was just painful, and it also didn’t help that I was thoroughly bored by the storyline of her brother. I felt sorry for him but this “I will go to an idiot child’s middle school to confront my bullies” crap was painful to watch. It’s ridiculous beyond belief and enough for me to question the point of the film, because it turned Suzuko’s eventual decision to go home (that is how I interpreted it) into a ridiculous endeavor as well.

This is a movie entirely for Aoi Yuu fans. If you don’t like her as an actress, or have no interest in these somewhat pointless, modern Japanese movies whose direction and quality are closer to live-action TV shows rather than movies like “Departures”, then stay away from this.