In the landscape of Japanese cinema, Shinji Sōmai's 1993 feature Moving stands as an elegant and acclaimed portrait of adolescence. This hypnotic, meditative film follows the journey of a 12-year-old girl whose world is upended by her parents' separation, setting her coming-of-age in motion.
A Family's Breakdown Through Tweenage Eyes
The story centres on Renko Urushiba, a girl brought to life with captivating authenticity by actor Tomoko Tabata. Renko is a complex child, equal parts perceptive and mischievous. Her character is starkly revealed during a school science class when classmates confront her for befriending Tachibana, a girl from Tokyo shunned for having divorced parents. In a defiant act, Renko hurls a laboratory burner on to her desk, setting it ablaze and throwing the class into chaos. The irony is profound, as unbeknown to her peers, Renko's own parents are separated.
With his signature cinematic style, director Shinji Sōmai uses long takes and elaborate camera movements to trace the thorny path towards adolescence. The camera tirelessly follows Renko's hurried footsteps as she dashes between her discordant parents, capturing the uncertainty that defines her life.
The Discordant Parents and Renko's Ploys
Renko's father, Kenichi (played by Kiichi Nakai), is a gentle but ultimately ineffectual man. While his moments with his daughter are playful, his vacant gazes betray a deeper weariness. In contrast, her mother, Nazuna (Junko Sakurada), is fiercely assertive. After the split, she throws herself into reinventing their lives, but her fervent resolve causes her affection to harden into impatience and control.
Caught in this emotional storm, mirrored by the downpours of Kyoto's summer, Renko begins to construct various ploys to reverse her parents' separation. She runs, lashes out, and quietly observes as her sense of normalcy crumbles away. In one pivotal scene, she locks herself in a bathroom, forcing her parents to confront one another. The heated argument that erupts allows Renko to glimpse a tempestuous side of them she has never known. As Kenichi and Nazuna sink into a wounded silence, Renko's world of innocence shatters.
A Personal Rite of Passage in Japan's Lost Decade
Undeterred, Renko continues her earnest, often painful attempts at reconnecting her parents, oscillating between sowing domestic havoc and speeding through urban landscapes. As the camera drifts across rooms and streets, the film's 1990s backdrop is brought to the fore. This period, referred to as Japan's 'lost decade', saw the country's economic bubble burst, plunging a previously forward-looking society into stagnation. In the breakdown of Renko's family, one can sense a wider national loss of faith in the nuclear family and the economic system that once sustained it.
The film elegantly weaves in Kyoto's summer festivals, linking the growing tensions of the Urushiba household with a collective sense of spirituality. When Nazuna finds Renko missing, the faint drums and bells of the famous Gion festival heighten her loneliness. In another scene, as Kenichi takes Renko home on his motorcycle, the Kanji character for 'great' burns on a mountainside as part of a bonfire rite to farewell ancestral spirits, a melancholic symbol of fragile bonds.
In a final, desperate ploy, Renko runs away and disappears into a local festival by Lake Biwa. Bundles of burning hay and blazing torches cast an amber glow into the night, creating a hypnotic and meditative atmosphere for her personal rite of passage. Finding herself suspended between a past she can no longer hold on to and a future full of doubts, Renko gradually stops running. The film, having raced alongside her, finally slows down. As dawn breaks, ripples glisten in the half-light, carrying her slowly away from her childhood.
Moving is a masterful exploration of a child's resilience and the painful transition into adolescence, set against a nuanced portrait of 1990s Japan.
