Au revoir l’été

Secondary-school student Sakuko accompanies her aunt Mikie on a holiday to a resort town on the coast far from Tokyo. Besides cycling trips and strolls on the beach, Mikie hopes to use the two-week holiday to complete her research project. In the meantime, Sakuko meets Takashi, a refugee from Fukushima who works in the hotel belonging to Ukichi, a friend of Mikie’s sister.
With Au revoir l’été, Fukada Koji wanted to make ‘a film in which a scene with only a boy and a girl walking along the coastline is enough to take your breath away. A film without exaggeration, violence and eccentricity’.
With carefully observed scenes, Fukada not only succeeds in perfectly capturing the mood of a languid holiday, he also manages to subtly sketch the psychology of the different characters. In the meantime, he strikes a critical note on nuclear power and the phenomenon of the ‘love hotel’, where elderly businessmen take young girls.