Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops (2017)

Director: Daigo Matsui

Screenplay: Daigo Matsui

Cast: Yuzu Aoki; Guama; Kazumasa Kadoi; Momoha; Kokoro Morita; Reiko Tanaka; Taketo Tanaka; Jôtarô Tozuka; Mimori Wakasugi

Note: This film was viewed as part of the virtual film festival We Are One, an admirable project between May 29th and June 7th 2020 where in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, major film festivals such as the Tokyo International Film Festival here for Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops came together to screen films for free internationally on YouTube. Hopefully these films will be easy to locate in the time afterwards. Hopefully this type of festival will also be more common.

 

A future so piss normal you could puke...

Beginning with a group of teenagers rehearsing a play in a small town, specifically British playwright Simon Stephen’s Morning, the evocatively titled Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops sets up its idiosyncratic structure from the get-go. Entirely shot within one take, director Daigo Matsui will bend time, weeks building up to what is supposed to be the performance of this play told within one seventy plus minute movie without editing the single camera shot. It is something idiosyncratic still to this day, the history of the one-take film developing into the 2000s because the digital camera technology allowed a lack of restrictions celluloid had, specifically with the physical film restricting how much time, per length, could be fit even into a modern camera. Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark (2002) was the first big example of this experiment, still to this day an incredible achievement of telling a one take that also went through time in telling the history of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, on a bigger budget and with knowledge that takes of this elaborate production failed continually before there was success. Here these risks, even on a lower budget and less cogs required to be moved about, are still fraught for Daigo Matsui to have attempted, as this is still a story with an unknown cast that becomes dynamic, when the producer informs the cast the show will not go on due to low ticket sells.

It causes a seismic change in the emotion and action from the disappointment, especially for the lead actress Kokoro (Kokoro Morita) who, already unsure of herself and being questioned in her ability to perform, eventually decides alongside others to rebel against this after the heart and soul they poured into their work. Structurally, the concept of the film leads to new issues as now you have to negotiate around the premise. Daigo Matsui is effectively recording live theatre, something which has taken place decades before in the medium of television, but that was usually restricted to one set or so. He is still restricting himself to one geographic location here, but that includes the street this is taking place one, with ordinary people wandering past, the theatre nearby that is snuck into in the final, and the original building the story begins in with its various rooms and corridors. He is also working with a local cast of teenagers who use their real names, in a blurring of their characters and their own figures they are playing in their rehearsals. As a result, he has the camera glide throughout his locations, an achievement for the camera person in endurance, with an added challenge that he is not working with known actors but real teens he cast in local auditions¹, which brought new potential risks to this production when a larger scale one like Russian Ark would have casted professionals.

The time lapse is simple though - literally a text caption appears (usually with an extreme close-up of Kokoro) and a room shifts forward in time. Kokoro as the actor most effected by the cancellation is already a suitably passionate figure we follow, already stressed and anxious by whether she is any good or not in the role, eventually progresses on with a group of friend from the rehearsals to sneak onto the stage to perform to an empty crowd (and us the viewers). The only other aesthetic detail to note is that, when the film transitions to the play being acted out, two black bars turn the screen from full to letterboxed. When this appears later, in what should not necessarily be acted scenes for the characters, introduces a blurring between the boundaries for them between their performances and them. That the play itself, from Simon Stephens, is about teenagers speaking frankly, exploring their sexualities and being antagonised by the adult world around them is befitting as it mirrors the world the casts' worlds, on multiple levels, regardless of an initial cultural difference between Britain and Japan.

In terms of the plot, there is one peculiar sequence which does jar the viewer out of nowhere, which has the lead and another girl tie up and bash the head in of a male member of the theatre troupe in a rehearsal room. Besides that odd tangent of destruction, where there is no confirmation whether it was acting or a dead classmate has been left, the only thing of the film which does not make it a traditional teen movie, the traditional tale of going against the grownups as you find in the West, is the greater sense of sincerity and "fuck" being used a lot. The entire film is brimming with a passion to it that overcomes even how simplistic the message and the ending arguably are. With the knowledge this film is drawing from the director's own history with theatre, having his own company, you feel a lot more weight to the film's simple but sincere attitude to the pure desire to act and perform regardless of whether it is popular or not.

From this part, the film does feel imbued with this excitement even structurally, as once the camera can roam other environments - step outside, follow two of the female cast walking through a crowded street - Ice Cream... does naturally build to a natural escalation in tone. As much of that, if the film has a most valuable person beyond the camera person, is when one of the cast is introduced, who rap sings with an accompanying guitarist with him at all times, not someone who exists always as a character but as much a one man Greek chorus of teen disgruntlement and angry snottiness. By the point the film builds from characters like this providing musical accompaniment and the camera is having catch up with actors in an actual theatre the production was allowed to wander around it is nigh on impossible to not be carried along with the film. Even in terms of shooting the film in one take, a brave move for any director-writer, it fits the entire message and tone as much to have taken this passionate risk too.

Abstract Spectrum: Unconventional

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

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1) HERE