The Lonely Hearts Club Band in September

Ryo (Naito Takeshi) was a legendary biker in his day, cruising the Daisankeihin Highway on his Suzuki 370SP with a bottle of gin in his hand. But he stopped riding last September, when his best friend Tetsuji deliberately killed himself in a crash. Now he tends the bar in a dive called the Lonely Hearts Club. Many people expect Ryo to ride again when the anniversary of Tetsuji’s death comes around. They include his former gang-members, the members of a rival gang and the trucker Hane, who likes to hunt down bikers. Everyone is waiting for September… Nagasaki’s first 35mm feature picks up the dark mood of his earlier indie movies with a tale of movement and stasis. The movement is mostly recollected (flashbacks to Tetsuji’s suicide, one of the very few riding scenes in the film), while the stasis is emotional: it’s a film in which everyone is somehow rooted to the spot, unable to move forward but liable to lash out in frustration. The film almost didn’t happen: Nagasaki and members of his crew were seriously injured in an actual motorcycle crash while filming in 1980, and the film couldn’t be finished until he came out of hospital many months later. See Nagasaki’s video-essay After That for more details. (TR)

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