Release date: November 8, 2008 Running Time: 100 minutes Director: Shun Nakahara
Main Cast: parenthesis were the names of their character in the play
Saki Fukuda as Momo Yuki (Peter)
Saki Terashima as Mayuko Akaboshi (Lopakhin)
Anne Watanabe as Aoi Ogasawara (Ranevskaya)
Yuko Oshima as Midori Sawa (Varya)
Haneyuri as Nanami Yokota (Anya)
Rei Kikukawa as Kayo Banno, the class teacher and former student at the school
Sumiko Fujii as Reika Takayama, schools principal
Ren Osugi as Nisaburo Suzuki, school janitor
Tomo Yanagishita as Su Machida
Aya Ueto as Rimi, small cameo as a singer
This is a remake of a 1990 movie which I never saw and heard there are some differences in the plot but in the end I guess things work out the same. Second time I've seen this film but the first time was with no subs, having them really made such a difference, far far a classic but all in all an enjoyable film.
Saki plays transfer student Momo who was a talented violin player at her previous school. I say was a talented violinist because for some reason at her previous school during an audition she sabotaged her own performance and threw away her potential career at it, really no reason was given why Momo did it. That was at the end of her junior year at high school, for her senior year she transferred to an all girls school that her mother and sister had graduated from. At first Momo doesn't hit it off well at her new school, she's kind of a distant girl and bit of a rebel too, she has a hard time adjusting to the strict school's rules and gets scolded by both the head master and one of the students.
Shortly after her arrival she finds out about another building on the school grounds, one that is about to be torn down. It was an older school building which hasn't been used for years and one day instead of being in class Momo goes to investigate the old building. There she finds a book called "The Cherry Orchard", it was an old play written by the Russian author Chekhov and the first performance of the play was in 1904. Momo does some asking around as is told by the student Mayuko, the class rep who is also supposed to be her 'mentor', that the play was once a school tradition, it had been put on by the students for along time but suddenly the school, stopped the play 11 years ago.
Momo keeps investigating and her older sister who was at the school 11 years ago told her that the reason the play was cancelled was because one of the performers back then had gotten pregnant. When the school found out about the pregnancy the student committed suicide, since then the school has forbidden the play to be staged but it was never in writing. Momo and a few of her classmates obtain the script for "The Cherry Orchard" play and decide to stage the play but there are many obstacles in the way. One is that they can't put it on at the school so where can they perform it? Also no teacher is allowed to help them so they need to do all the directing, props, really everything from A to Z though none of them have had any experience in staging a play. Momo is then sort of handed the director's duties, at first she wasn't going to be an actress in the play as enough students heard what was going on and against the school's objections joined the play either as actresses or as stage hands.
The play is one with with both male and female characters so the girls also end up playing the male parts but that had been done previously until the play had been stopped 11 years prior. There were quite a few difficulties along the way of course, the main one was getting a place to stage the play but out of the blue one of Momo's ex-friends found a small rock club where they could put the play on. Also there were a few difficulties with the cast, none of the girls were all that great acting except for Aoi who was going to play the lead part of Ranevskaya but of course in the end it all worked out. The biggest casting problem was with the character of Peter, the first girl to attempt it failed but then Momo performed the part solo one time in a park for the other cast mates, seems like she was a born actress so besides being the director she also had the second biggest part in the play.
Though the school was so against the girls putting on the play in the end they relented thanks to the help of one teacher named Banno. She had been a student at the school 11 years ago when the play had been cancelled and she was able to convince the admin staff to allow the girls to stage the play at the school. So what had started out as something that seemed so unattainable to the girls, which was staging the play, in the end everything worked out well as they now had a place to stage the play along with a teacher who would help direct and they also had the blessing of the school's head master.
So in the end like a fairy tale story everything worked out well for the students as they were able to stage the play, the film ends there as we never see them performing it but I guess we really didn't need to.
Bit of a short review but this movie really didn't need a long one, not a simple story but there was really only one major storyline which of course was the staging of the play. There's also a few other reviews of the film that have been done, there really wasn't much more to add in which they didn't cover. In closing would give this a solid recommendation and a final grade of an 8.5/10, no classic but one that could be watched a few times and don't think any of us would get tired of watching it more than once.
The main cast all did a solid job, most of the cast you know and it was the first major part for all of them. It was also Saki's first major part and she did a fine job though she was supposed to be a rebellious type of girl but she came off as more of a moody, distant person, one who also always gave up on things easily until the staging of this play. Explained why the review was a bit short for a 100 minute movie but if the next few posts have a huge amount of screenshots from the film, guess you can sort of follow what happened quite easy by viewing them.
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