Sweet but uncloying, the director Nobuhiro Yamashita’s “Linda Linda Linda” celebrates girl power and teen spirit in equal measure. It’s a coming-of-age film “unburdened by plot or hormonal drama,” as described by the New York Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis in a review from 2006 that praised the movie as one of the year’s “most unexpected pleasures.”
A favorite with J-pop aficionados and newly restored in 4K, “Linda Linda Linda” opens at the IFC Center on Friday, its charm undiminished.
When mishaps and quarrels pull apart an all-female rock quartet in Japan on the eve of their high school’s annual talent show, the remaining girls pull together to regroup with a slightly gawky Korean exchange student named Son (Doona Bae) hastily drafted as their new vocalist. After three days of hectic prep (and a sudden monsoon), their initial performance is … climactic.
Albeit far more reserved, “Linda Linda Linda” has a generic resemblance to showbiz success stories like “School of Rock” and “Josie and the Pussycats.” But whatever it lacks in surprises, it makes up in subtext.
There is nothing cutesy about this ensemble. Nor are they especially edgy, although the film involves their appropriation of an anthem, “Linda Linda,” closely associated with Japan’s pre-eminent punk band, the Blue Hearts. Theirs is an ethos of cooperation, underscored by school banners promoting Japanese-Korean cultural exchange. Half as a joke, the girls name their new band Parlan Maum (Korean for Blue Hearts).
Much of the movie’s humor is derived from Son’s stubborn grit despite her halting Japanese. In one scene, she goes alone to practice singing at a karaoke bar and confounds custom by refusing to order a drink. In another, she handles an awkward declaration of love from a smitten classmate with the frank reply, “I don’t dislike you but I don’t like you.”
“Linda Linda Linda” also inspired the current Los Angeles rock band the Linda Lindas, and the movie’s casting is particularly resonant. Kyoko, the band’s drummer, is played by Aki Maeda, fresh from the teenage survivalist blood bath “Battle Royale.” Shiori Sekine, the bassist Nozomi, was in fact a bass player with the J-pop band Base Ball Bear. Parlan Maum’s purposely sullen founder and lead guitarist, Kei (Yu Kashii), is something of a hipster whose daydreams feature Pierre Taki, a member of the synth-pop band Denki Groove, along with a gaggle of Ramones impersonators. But as Son conquers stage fright as well as Japanese, and fronts for the barefoot, bedraggled Parlan Maum, she emerges as the movie’s not-so-secret star.
Following “Linda Linda Linda,” Doona Bae played an action heroine in Bong Joon Ho’s monster movie “The Host” (2007), delivered a near stylized Kabuki turn in another Japanese film, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Air Doll” (a Hoffmanesque fairy tale from 2008, in which an inflatable sex partner comes to life and goes exploring), and went on to a long career in Korean TV.
On the other hand, the talented director of “Linda Linda Linda” is somewhat enigmatic. Yamashita made several stylized low-budget films on youthful anomie before his commercial breakthrough. Still, however mainstream, the movie is not exactly conventional. It is characterized by distanced camera placement, static symmetrical compositions, a fondness for “empty” moments (including wistful landscape shots) and understated humor recalling the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu.
Along with the spirited performances, the unobtrusive filmmaking is worthy of attention.
Linda Linda Linda
Opens Friday at IFC Center in Manhattan; ifccenter.com.
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