A talented singer with amnesia, a dangerous obligor with tenderness......When different identities assemble together, something interesting is surely to happen. This is how the story begins in Yamashita Nobuhiro’s new film La La La at Rock Bottom. As the leading roles of almost all his previous films, this time again, we meet a frustrated hero living on the margin of the society.
The impression that movie fans made on the director’s style might differ, too. For some people, his films are extremely slow-paced and no way to predict the epitasis, making audience drowsy a lot. For the other people, he is a brilliant director with unique insight of Osaka prospect, genius skills of alienation effect, and great sense of humor for sure.
Although Nobuhiro may never become a successful blockbuster director, at least this time he made a try to combine the minority aesthetic to public idol—The leading actor, Subaru, is a real popular singer of the Japanese band Kanjani Eight. The director took away all his idol radiance, leaving a wooden charmless feature that is different from any heroes you can find in other band movies.
The relationship between the main actor and the actress is subtle and complicated, but the film shows the most minimalist way to depict it. For example, in the end, a silent close-up of the leading actress’s gesture is nearly all the proof we have to make sure their emotions to each other. That’s exactly the Nobuhiro’s way of showing romance.
As for the photography, steady long shot is still no doubt the director’s preference. So we can often see he put his hero sitting in front the camera doing nothing, but dispatch more than ten supporting roles in the background to continually make comedy effects. One of the most impressive scenes in the film is the two protagonists compete each other to spit the melon seeds. The camera was set face to face with them and rolled for quite a few minutes. Such long shots lower the whole pace of the film while at the same time make it full of artistic conception.
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