Drowning Love (2016)

This is like the representative of being young and dumbly in love. There is the kind of feeling in which they are deeply love each other but just aren't meant to be together. The movie will be pretty confusing, but you need to remember that the characters are teenagers. Aren't we going round and round and running a little bit from the one that we like?

Basically a story we've seen from Japan a thousand times: Pretty girl transfer student from Tokyo to Hicksville falls for the brooding bad boy in class. It treats this middle school romance as if it were a little more mature than it is. What sets it apart are some of the directorial choices in editing and sound.There are some over-the-top drama moments that would kill the film if they weren't normalized by the weirdness of the overall. Almost every scene in the film is accompanied by a different piece of music. Some good, some not so good, but they all act strongly, not in the background, in shaping the emotion of the scene. And the director uses the emotion, or intensity, of the music to shape her film editing. It's not subtle, and I don't think I've seen anything like it before--at least to the extent that the whole film follows this pattern, scene after scene.*Drowning Love* doesn't seem to care much about being a film as much as being a Live Action adaptation of a manga (which I haven't read). The director (I learned after the fact and it made perfect sense) is a 20-something young woman. It's like "Hey! One of us actually did this instead of some pervy old man!" and may explain some of the music video/video game aspects of the presentation.There's one big problem with it. Well, two. The first is: it doesn't really make sense. The second is: it starts off as a typical teen romance (shojo, I think they're called), then an attempted/aborted rape happens which kicks up the intensity--until it gets lost. And that's the problem. This middle school girl almost gets raped, and two minutes later in the film it's forgotten or downplayed by everyone until the end where it's brought back up for the finale. There's also a "sensitive boy" friend who gets tossed off the film after doing his little duty, and the adults in the film are just place holders who look out of place in the film--basically the way they must look to most middle school kids. Kudos for that.Nana Komatsu of *World of Kanako* fame stars. She's got a certain set of chops. Some fancy boy idol, who dyed his hair blond for the role, plays broody boy. They have chemistry, and I enjoyed Nana's complexity in dealing with broody boy. He treats her like a dog and she's determined to get to a place where he will be a whimpering puppy. And tells him as much. I enjoy the way the Japanese use middle school students to act out a Doomed Lovers play. You look at the players--they're young, there's no sex. They seem innocent, but are given dialog that betrays a wisdom and experience beyond their years.Not recommending it to anyone who isn't already interested in these kinds of movies. But this one is a little different and could offer something of interest because of the out-of-the-box way it's constructed. I think the ending is supposed to be big and meaningful but it didn't make any sense to me. It's not a film that meanders around and offers a emotional payoff at the end. It just spirals off.

I had searched for this movie and then decided to watch it just for Masaki Suda and killing time.To be honest ,I did not have so much expectations of it but that I have been watching it changed my mind and caught me by BIG surprise.This is a romance movie where distinguishes itself from others are its full-blown and artistic narrative structure, most appropriate actors selected,young and most beautiful love story.I really love this movie!

Actually, I watched this movie for Nana and was expecting something romantic and a light movie but it was not. I have neck read the manga it was adapted from. This is not my kind of movie as I didn't know what was going on in the movie but I must say all the actors acted very well. It depends on our choice, so some may love it and some may hate it. But it was not my kind of movie and therefore, I rated 5 for Nana.