Cannes 2024: My Sunshine is a touching coming of age story

★★★★★ | Hiroshi Okuyama

There are many films about coming of age. Most of them are maudlin, some are good, and very few are truly great. The best ones understand that growing up doesn’t happen in one instance. We come of age many times in our life, and each of these moments is seismic.

My Sunshine belongs to the group of great films. It is directed by a young filmmaker called Hiroshi Okuyama, who is just 28. Yet he handles the tender material with experience beyond his years. His influences are clear, but it would be wrong to call this anything but his film.

Set in a small town on one of the islands of Japan, where life revolves around the changing seasons, My Sunshine is ultimately a story of love. Both unrequited and unspoken. It’s about how we long to connect with others, even as we don’t fully understand ourselves. Our heroes are two children and their skating instructor, all misfits in their own way. The youngsters are just old enough to understand feelings, yet young enough to not complicate them with everything that adults do. Their coach, a young man barely in his thirties, knows these complications intimately. It’s only in teaching the next generation that he finds peace. But seasons change, and one cannot skate forever.

Okuyama is a calm, unhurried director. He lets the scenes breathe, and we can’t help but be swallowed in. There’s an air of wistful nostalgia that lingers over the film. A gentle wish that moments like these could simply continue, and a desire to understand why they cannot.

Outside the rink, the world is full of prejudice and suspicion. We get the sense that for everyone, sport is an escape. Even those who don’t play use it as a way to live vicariously through others. For our heroes, figure skating becomes an act of defiance. A sport where the team is two individuals who trust each other.

As the seasons change again, Okuyama allows for quiet tragedy and disappointment to enter his sleepy paradise. It’s here the coming of age takes place, and he never overplays his hand. Disappointment, heartbreak, and change all go together, yet they’re not accompanied by grand displays of emotion. Sometimes these feelings are so overwhelming, they shut us down entirely.

In a beautiful scene, two characters play catch. Like with other great sports films, this too carries implications of a larger, unspoken conversation. The sun sets, spring breaks, and things have changed. They hold onto the moment as long as they can, and smile. It’s a heartbreaking moment reminiscent of Takeshi Kitano’s finest works. Full of melancholy and gentle humor.

My Sunshine is a great film because it leaves us with questions. We wonder what will happen to these people next season, and the years after that. They live on as memories somewhere in our unconscious. Like the best films, My Sunshine becomes a part of us and never lets go.