FILM SCREENINGS

Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast

1986. Japan. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. Screenplay by Haruo Sato, Shinobu Yamada. With Saburo Boya, Sen Hara, Yasufumi Hayashi. During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Seatown. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her. With surprising moments of caricature and slapstick, Obayashi celebrates the anarchic world of adolescence while also satirizing adult hypocrisy and conformism. This is the color version of a film that was also released in black and white. Print lent by The Japan Foundation; courtesy Toho Distribution. In Japanese; English subtitles. 135 min.