Spring Awakens

This is ostensibly a sex-education film -- with hardly any education! -- but it's incredibly beautiful. The spring and early summer scenery in Nagano (probably) echo the budding sexuality of the film's young characters. A good dose of German romantic poetry also adds to the barely sublimated sexual atmospherics. The film isn't perfect; the cast is obviously inexperienced and the film hypocritically avoids a frank discussion of sex. But even if the sublimation of sexuality runs counter to the film's surface ideology, it does make for great beauty. A young Sugi Yoko has an uncredited role as a high school student getting a school physical, but Nature is the real star.