Japanese sports films tend to follow a zero-to-hero arc, climaxing in a big, critical competition. Hiroshi Okuyama’s second feature, “My Sunshine,” uses this arc, but in the service of a coming-of-age story about teen figure skaters that extends wider and deeper than the genre norm.
Based on the director’s original script, the film also comes from an unusually personal place: Okuyama trained and competed as a skater for seven years. The film’s adult coach, played by a thoroughly committed Sosuke Ikematsu, sounds and moves like a true pro, not the standard movie approximation of one.
And the skating scenes, for which Okuyama strapped on a pair of blades to get him and his camera closer to the action, combine realism and lyricism to a rare degree, which are enhanced by soft lighting that bathes his two stars in the elegiac glow of youthful joy and grace.
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