Swing Girls

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Swing Girls
Swing Girls film poster
Directed by	Shinobu Yaguchi
Produced by	Shintaro Horikawa, Daisuke Sekiguchi
Written by	Junko Yaguchi, Shinobu Yaguchi
Starring	Juri Ueno, Yuta Hiraoka
Release date(s)	September 11, 2004
Running time	105 min
Language	Japanese
Budget	~ ¥500,000,000
IMDb profile

Swing Girls (スウィングガールズ; Suwingu gaaruzu) is a 2004 comedy film co-written and directed by the Japanese filmmaker Shinobu Yaguchi about the efforts of a group of high school girls to form a jazz band.

Swing Girls is set in rural Yamagata prefecture, in northern Japan and the characters often use the local Yamagata-ben dialect for comic effect.

The film ranked 8th at the Japanese box office in 2004, and won seven prizes at the 2005 Japanese Academy Awards, including 'Most Popular Film' and 'Newcomer of the Year' awards for Yuta Hiraoka and Juri Ueno.

The cast includes Yuta Hiraoka (Takuo, the leader of the band), Juri Ueno (Tomoko), Shihori Kanjiya (Yoshie), Yuika Motokariya (Sekiguchi) and Yukari Toyashima (Naomi). The actors performed their own music for the film.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Swing Girls is a feel-good comedy following Yaguchi’s familiar formula of novices starting a new and slightly unusual activity, suffering various problems and set-backs on the way, but finding triumph in the end.

The films begins in a summer-holiday deserted school in rural Yamagata prefecture, in northern Japan. Eventually the camera finds a class of girls in a summer school/make-up math class. The girls in the class are all involved in varying states of distraction, as their instructor (played by Naoto Takenaka of Shall We Dansu? fame) monotonly drones on about mathematics formulas in the sweltering heat. As one girl (Tomoko played by Juri Ueno) stares out the window, the school’s idolized brass band prepares to leave for an event. A few minutes later Tomoko sees a catering delivery truck pull up. Coming up with the idea to deliver the late bento lunches to band, currently playing at an important baseball game, the girls escape the dulldrum of the class. On the trip there the girls communically devour one of the boxes and proceed to fall asleep. Because of this they miss their stop and have to walk back to where the game is taking place. Because of their tardiness the lunches spoil and the entire band becomes ill, excluding the timid symbol player Takuo (played by Yuta Hiraoka).

The girls realise that they can permanently skip mathematics lessons if they take the place of the sick band members. There are only sixteen of them, which is too few for a regular brass band, so Takuo comes up with the idea to form a big band. As they learn to play together, the girls begin to become friends. However, after making the barest of beginnings toward being able to play, as well as toward enjoyment of playing, the original band recovers and returns. The novices are thanked and asked to leave.

Realizing that they truly had begun to enjoy playing, the group forms the band "Swing Girls (and a Boy)" with their math teacher (who used to take music classes to impress the band teacher) conducting. As winter rolls around the group gets word of a local band competion and decide to enter. After filming an performace on the roof of their now snoy schoo, Tomoko is left in charge of delivering the tape, but doesn’t due so until it is too late. She later learns by mail that “due to the unusually high number of applicatns” entrance into the competition has been restricted to a first-come basis; due to the lateness of their entry, “Swing Girls” has been cut. Meanwhile, the rest of the band is unaware of this and continues to prepare for the concert.

Their math teacher/conductor, feeling guilty when Takuo (now on piano keyboard) finds out that he knows virtually nothing about music, absconds from the performace. The band finds this out the day before they are to leave, still under the impression that they will be performing at the event.

The film follows the various problems and situations the group encounters; from exercise regimes, learning to play their instruments, raising money, finding a teacher and entering a local music competition. What started as an excuse to miss lessons becomes a passion, and the film closses to rapturous applause for “Swing Girls”’ acheivment.