Cannes 2024: My Sunshine, Rumours, The Balconettes | Festivals & Awards

“My Sunshine,” the second feature from director Hiroshi Okuyama, is a gentle, unassuming film about the pain and misdirection that can arise from young love. Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) is an awkward child; he participates in organized sports because his friends are there, not because he has any genuine interest or skill in physical activities. In an early scene, we see him screw up fielding a baseball. When hockey season comes, more of the same of his half-hearted play arises. Two good developments, however, do occur at the rink: He develops a crush on Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi), a fast-rising figure skater coached at the rink by former skating champion Arakawa (Sōsuke Ikematsu). The latter thinks the two could pair well together despite Takuya’s skating skills being somewhat rudimentary. The trio, in turn, form a makeshift family that appears destined to crumble quickly. 

Okuyama’s coming-of-age film is deceptively simple: We follow Takuya and Sakura working together, building a rapport, and eventually finding comfort in one another. Takuya’s adoration for Sakura is often expressed through over-exposed POV shots, depicting Sakura bathed in ethereal light. Sakura, meanwhile, isn’t interested in her young, short partner. She has a crush on her coach, a desire that goes unrecognized by him because, unbeknownst to Sakura and Takuya, Arakawa is gay. 

The easy comparison for “My Sunshine,” a fairly swift, delicately edited and composed film, would be “Billy Elliot.” The story, after all, takes place in a small community where there aren’t many young boys figure skating (what many in the town assume is a girl’s sport). But Okuyama is working in a different mode than in that classic British film. He is interested in the essence and purity of love, particularly expressed by two children who’ve not had the experience of heartbreak and disappointment. While you do wish Okuyama developed the late tonal shift that occurs, imbuing it with greater depth—it’s a tad too basic, betraying the subtle complexity that makes this tidy narrative captivating—the broader warmth of “My Sunshine” is still profoundly moving. 

Writer/director Guy Maddin is a wonderful sicko. He’s never been hesitant to blend taboo subjects with comedy. But his latest film, “Rumours,” might be his broadest film to date. Effortlessly hilarious and deceptively thought-provoking, Maddin’s apocalyptic satire often recalls Armando Iannucci’s equally brilliant “The Death of Stalin.” Except, rather than being set in the USSR, where a power vacuum has caused bumbling, conniving politicos to position themselves into power—Maddin’s film is set at a G7 summit where world leaders are tasked with coming up with a defining statement to address a recent, unnamed crisis affecting the globe.  

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