What happens in the space between innocence and violence? In most films, you can expect the connective tissue of a plot, but in Shinji Sōmai’s Typhoon Club, an atmosphere as sinister as it is opaque breathes and blossoms between each turbulent life-defining moment. Every jolt of harsh imagery simmers quietly, as if the upsetting sequence was designed to eventually hypnotize you. In order to engage with this provocative and meditative film, you must find your own meaning and pathway through every transgressive act.
Sōmai’s masterpiece follows a group of young teens stuck inside their school as a typhoon rattles the world around them. An evacuation notice sends the rest of the school and staff home, but an unsupervised group of seven students remain in the building. This storm is violent enough to place hasty restrictions on each character and yet that unrelenting rain outside always feels more serene than chaotic within the aesthetic of the film. It is a force of nature, after all, both unpredictable and inevitable. The kids sheltering inside the school teeter on the precipice of adulthood while the angst of youth fuels their most unhinged whims. A boy spills acid down a girl’s back, a group of girls almost drown a boy, a girl is attacked and nearly raped. Their actions end up even more unpredictable and shocking than the typhoon, but the mood remains calm due to the film’s meditative pace and long single takes. The characters’ actions become less of a road map for the plot and more of an existential experience to wade through.
Up until making Typhoon Club, Sōmai had already dabbled in the explosive juxtaposition of youth and gritty subject matter: whether it was the bubblegum satire of Sailor Suit & Machine Gun (1981), in which a little girl becomes the leader of a yakuza clan; the brazen discomfort in Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion (1985) where a coming of age story presents ambiguous romance between a girl and her adopted father; or the cinéma vérité violence of P.P. Rider (1983) as three children try to rescue the class bully who has been kidnapped by a yakuza clan. However, it’s in Typhoon Club where Sōmai leans furthest into this juxtaposition. The camera savors each sinister moment as if it’s a startling discovery, then leaves the audience to decipher the exhale of ennui that follows.
On one hand, Typhoon Club can be viewed as his attempt to take this controversial approach to its furthest and most personal limits. But the script was in fact handed to the Director’s Company, the production company in Japan that Sōmai was involved in founding, after an open call was placed for potential writers. Yuji Kato’s screenplay was already mired in this existential pondering of youth and destruction. Sōmai was the director who eventually decided to tackle the material.
Sōmai’s directorial style lives in spiritual reverence to the spectacle. He masterfully executes gorgeous long shots that showcase raw, captivating, and bewildering performances. His dynamic mise-en-scene is unblinking as it produces a strange beauty amid the disturbing and unexpected outbursts of violence.
For the uninitiated, this makes for a challenging narrative experience. Sōmai does not hold our hand. We are routinely shaken by characters whose actions often bring to mind a cat playing with a wounded bird — pawing out of curiosity until the creature is lifeless, unaware of how fatal its behavior is. That same consequence of death exists in the world of Typhoon Club. We’re left to process what could potentially be a statement on nihilism through the guise of innocence gone feral.
One of the most transgressive and confounding moments occurs when Ken (Shigeru Benibayashi) chases and assaults Michiko (Uka Ônishi). While we are given hints that Ken might have feelings for Michiko earlier in the film, Ken’s blank determination makes his actions somewhat indecipherable as Michiko continuously defends herself against his rage. In this drawn out sequence composed of long takes, the two engage in a struggle that almost morphs into a scene out of a slasher film thanks to the moon-lit lighting and shaky POV. Ken’s repetitive mantra of “Welcome home” while kicking down a door leaves him seeming like a malfunctioning robot. The scene ends on a powerful note, with Ken ripping Michiko’s shirt to reveal the scar from when he poured acid down her back. This sends both characters into an emotional fit, as if they’ve both been the victim of the assault. Moments like this punctuate the film, leaving you to come to your own conclusions as the characters display reactions both highly dramatic and yet untethered to any concrete explanation. Was Ken acting out on an impulse to rape Michiko? Was Ken in love with Michiko? Did Michiko forgive Ken after he stopped trying to assault her? None of this is answered or made clear as the film continues on into its subdued atmosphere.
Occasionally we are given a more grounded strand to follow. Mikami (Yuichi Mikami) is the most philosophical, inquisitive, and level-headed of the group. In many ways he feels like the one to hang your emotions on, as he guides you through all of these events with his stoicism and brooding existential pondering. He stays at the school in the hopes that his friend Rie (Youki Kudoh) will return. The audience can see she’s off on her own adventure downtown, but her absence leads Mikami to become concerned. His own narrative thread, however, leads Typhoon Club to its most revelatory and punishing place.
And it’s not only moments of pain — there’s dancing, too. Near the end of the film, the children revert to a more primal state, eventually removing their clothes behind a haze of rainfall. As they lose their inhibitions to the rhythms of some curiously curated reggae, it’s as if the characters have morphed into one ecstatic organism while also transcending something vague yet evocative as they mingle with the treacherous rain.
Fortunately, a catharsis is earned as we reach the last act. The rain subsides just as the characters experience what will be their defining moment: the most traumatic experience of them all. It’s at this point that we feel the effects of the rain, that transformative power of the typhoon that purifies the self and punishes the landscape. The credits roll, the film ends, and we get up out of our seats and enter back into an opaque life where we are occasionally bombarded by these caustic moments that beg to be deciphered. The spectacle of life resonates and lingers, just like Typhoon Club.
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