Directed by Shinji Somai • 1985 • Japan
Starring Youki Kudoh, Yuichi Mikami, Tomokazu Miura

A work of raw, elemental power widely regarded as director Shinji Somai’s finest achievement, this intensely visceral take on the coming-of-age film follows an ensemble of junior-high students in a provincial town beset by a summertime malaise as a typhoon looms. When the storm makes landfall, the teens find themselves holed up in their school unsupervised, while another classmate (Yuki Kudo) disappears alone on a harrowing trek to the big city. Set adrift in a world suddenly unmoored, the students let loose their pent-up angst and burgeoning passions in a series of propulsive, phantasmic scenes—part apocalypse, part utopia—as the deluge rages on into the night. In daring long takes, Somai gives material form to the students’ turbulent inner lives.