Swing Girls

Title: Swing Girls
Rating: 4.5/5
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Starring: Juri Ueno, Yûta Hiraoka, Shihori Kanjiya, Yuika Motokariya, Yukari Toyoshima
Director: Shinobu Yaguchi
Language: Japanese

It wasn't all too long ago that I saw Juri Ueno in “Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers,” and it would be the perfect lie to say that she enchanted me enough there to seek out more of her work. Of course that wasn't true. I had no idea she was in this until a few minutes when I started pointing and going 'hang on,' but I can't say that her presence was anything but a delightful surprise in watching a film I'd clearly just downloaded for the cover of Japanese school girls in suggestive poses and whacked on from my bed, too lazy to really check what film it was that I was watching. Sometimes this is a recipe for disaster as I have things on my computer that I honestly have no idea what I was thinking when I downloaded (actually, it probably isn't too far off from this), but this wasn't to be the case here; I was sold on the promise of Japanese school girls and a dollop of Jazz. What I wasn't expecting was discover one of funniest comedies I've seen in a very long time.

Remedial Maths. Casually gazing out the window to the brass band leaving on their journey to support the baseball team and they're stuck inside, until a chance offering comes by in the form of the brass bands caterer, arriving late. Snapping up the chance they agree to deliver the lunches to the team only to accidentally end up poisoning the entire band, except for the clumsy cymbal player, Takuo. Now in need of an entire new band, Takuo ends up looking after the class who only really want to get out of maths class and turn them from delinquent slackers to a Swing Jazz Band, though this only how the journey begins. Whilst there is a large cast to wrap your head around, there are really only the four lead girls whose faces you really have to remember; the rest of the ensemble have relatively minor roles, allowing more time to be spent fleshing out those few rather than the many; the shy but gifted Kaori; the fickle Yoshie; weight conscious Naomi and the playful lead, Tomoko.

But what really makes this journey work is that the cast themselves undertook a journey; there are no overdubbed performances, no miraculous transformations from zero to hero, and a lot of that is likely down to the directors decision to actually have the large cast perform the music on camera given only the training they could fit in around during filming, approximately 5 months. With a cast of – then – complete unknowns the atmosphere comes off more like a 'band camp' with the chemistry between much of the cast likely built up as a result of actually going on this exploration of the genre shining through as they react to one another. They enjoyed themselves in creating this film, and that's not easy for a director to fake from such a large cast, and that's all there really is to it. In less than two hours we get senile screaming old women, punks that write cheesy love songs, wild boar attack montages and a full fifteen minute concert performance. Somewhere between Spinal Tap's antics and School of Rock – without the tiring presence of Jack Black – sits Swing Girls, and the end result is more than equal to them both.