Watched Linda Linda Linda with Moona and Reins over the weekend. The film was a part of GSC’s Japanese Films Festival. Just like last year when I got to watch Shimotsuma Monogatari I went head over heels in love with it.

But unlike the eccentric and dynamically paced Shimotsuma Monogatari, Linda Linda Linda took a while to grow on me ( and by a while, I meant about several hours AFTER i watched it ) The direction and the way the story was told feels stagnant and slow paced most of the time. But without knowing it I ended up smiling and laughing at those awkward silence between characters and their interactions.

Asking me to describe the story will be very easy and at the same time, difficult. It’s easy because the movie is nothing as much as a plot than a scenario. The plot was established VERY early in the movie when you see an all high school girl rock band fell apart when their guitarist broke her finger. The vocalist got into an argument with the keyboardist over the replacement of the band member resulting in the vocalist leaving the band for good. All these tension ? They were all off screen and we were treated only with the aftermath and had to piece what happened from conversations between characters XD;

Many elements from this movie can easily put me off the movie ( since yanno, I’m such a commercial movies-h0 =P ). But somehow, the charming characters and the minimalistic way the movie was depicted rings something very honest and clear to the audience. There were no rival band in the movie, there were no prominent evil character that will try to sabotage the band; there weren’t even much tension that builds over the movie. The story was told in a way you’ll feel like you’re reading a diary of one of the main characters about what happened in that three days they’ve got. Somehow you can believe the characters and the events that passed through are as real as you are ( minus probably the strange Korean transfer student XD But there’s just no way ANYONE can *not* like her )

As much as you don’t enjoy movie that was paced in what musical term might label “andante” ; you should just watch it for the wide eyed, weird Korean transfer student turned vocalist who couldn’t speak much of the native Japanese language AT ALL. She is easily one of the most charming female character I’d seen on film right along with Amélie Poulain from Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain :3

At the end of the movie, if you don’t have the urge to sing along or at least hum to Blue Heart’s cover song “Linda Linda” (one of the three songs the band covered ); you had to be at least 80% not human.