Oh, My Buddha!

2009, 114 minutes, 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Tomorowo Taguchi. With Daichi Watanabe, Kazunobu Mineta, Shigeru Kishida, Asami Usuda, Lily Franky.

Introduction and Q&A with director Tomorowo Taguchi and actor Daichi Watanabe

July 10
Followed by the NIGHT OF THE FILMMAKERS Party!

"A well-told and compulsively watchable story."  – Marc Saint-Cyr, J-Film Pow-Wow

A whole new world of "free love" opens up to Jun (played by Daichi Watanabe, of the band Kuroneko Chelsey, making a breakthrough debut here) after taking up a friend’s offer to stay at a paradise-like island youth hostel over summer break. Previously walled off from sex at a private Buddhist school for boys, this young rock n’ roll music fiend’s life is changed forever.

In the tradition of George Lucas’ classic coming-of-age film, American Graffiti and Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, Taguchi and co. give a beautiful portrayal of youth, alive to the beauty of its slow fade, exalting their joys and tears alike before it all burns away, while sharing the full spectrum of intense adolescent emotions: from agonizing shame to exhilaration, frustration and doubt. Sentimental? Sure enough, but also almost impossibly sincere and always jubilant. Oh, My Buddha! scores big, makes all the right moves and hits all the right notes.

Part of Japan Cuts: Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema

TICKETS
$12 / $8 Japan Society members, seniors & students

Buy Tickets Online or please call the Japan Society Box Office at (212) 715-1258, Mon. – Fri. 11 am – 6 pm, Weekends 11 am – 5 pm.