28th Far East Film Festival: “All Green” Review

In All Greens, director Takashi Koyama considers what life is like for underprivileged Japanese youth and their quest to get out of their small town. How might they go about that? By selling those titular greens… aka weed.

Set in Ibaraki prefecture, where Koyama grew up, teen Boku Hidemi (Sara Minami) has an abusive father, an absent mother, and a desire to make it as a rap artist. When a music producer tries to assault her in exchange for recording her first song, Boku beats him up and steals both his money and his marijuana seeds. The seeds, she realises, can serve as a lifeline for her and her friends Miruku “Milk” Yaguchi (Natsuki Deguchi) and Mako Iwakuma (Mizuki Yoshida), so she suggests they revive their school’s gardening club to start growing and selling weed around town. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right?

All Greens has an interesting premise at its heart. It’s a story with bite, the kind of film that is unapologetic and full of rage, just like its characters, and is unafraid to explore what life is like for underprivileged kids in the worst circumstances in Japan. The film has a lot of great ideas – it even features a refreshingly progressive depiction of a young gay couple who Boku, Milk, and Mako enlist to help them in their illegal venture – but All Greens is a rather frustrating watch because it has issues with its pacing and overall tone.

This is the kind of film that thinks its fast-paced and interesting, but often isn’t. There are seemingly endless scenes where the characters are talking but with no actual purpose, moments that serve only to slow down the plot to a glacial pace. In fact, the film is so slow to start its main story that it takes 45 minutes to show the title credits, and even longer to get to the point where Boku, Milk and Mako start their illicit weed business, and All Greens is just over two hours long! It wastes so much time that the eventual payoff hardly feels worth it.

That said, Minami is a talented actress; she has the right amount of grit to play a character like Boku well and brings a quiet fury to the role. Her co-stars are also compelling, in their own way, but there’s just very little for them to work with in any meaningful way. In one scene, Boku describes running away from the scene of a crime as mimicking “the lead of a banal coming of age film”, it’s meant as a joke, but the sad irony is that’s exactly what All Greens feels like – a banal coming of age film. Which is a shame, when the film toys with so many interesting ideas and had such potential to be great.

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Written by Team View of the Arts

_{View of the Arts is an online publication dedicated to film, music, and the arts, with a strong focus on the Asian entertainment industry. As we continue to grow, we aim to deepen our coverage of Asian music while remaining committed to exploring and celebrating creativity across the global arts landscape.}