VIFF 2005 Reviews

Linda Linda Linda starts shortly after what was probably quite a fight. A girl has broken her finger in gym class. Unfortunately, she is the guitarist in band and it’s days before the big school ‘rock show’. The band’s two founding members fight over whether or not to replace their guitarist and go on. Headstrong, aloof Kei decides to cobble together her own band with the band’s drummer and bassist in place. They fill one empty slot – Kei decides to take over on guitar, despite the fact that she hasn’t ever played guitar. A second, perhaps more difficult slot to fill, is still empty - the singer. After a series of turned-down offers, the new band manages to enlist a singer. Unfortunately, the only girl they are able to get is Song (popular Korean actress Bae Du-Na), a Korean exchange student who barely speaks Japanese. Much of the humour in this modest deadpan comedy is derived from the language barrier between Song and the other girls, though much of that humour may have been lost on Western ears at the screening I attended.

Though films about Japanese schoolgirls could make a sub-genre unto themselves. Linda Linda Linda rises above its teasingly cute roots. At its core, it’s a story about the pleasures and pitfalls of female friendship. Boys come in and out of these girls’ lives but never at the price their central relationships with each other. Add a kick-ass soundtrack (the title of the film comes from a song by the Japanese new wave band The Blue Hearts, and the score is by none other than James Iha, of the Smashing Pumpkins) and a smart comic hand to the mix, and get a pretty good time.