If I had to pick a movie to represent "youth," Flowers and Alice would certainly be one of the first films I remembered.
In the first part of the movie, Hana (Suzuki Apricot) and Alice (Yu Aoi) ride the train to school together, peek at handsome guys together, chat without border, and play tricks on each other on the streets where cherry blossoms are scattered...
These cute gestures always make me smile. Watching them rejoice and mourn for the small troubles in life, I can't help but remember the years when there were no troubles. I think that the director and screenwriter Shunji Iwai presents a kind of leisurely and nonsensical head with a lyrical tone, which is an accurate portrayal of everyone's tragic green youth: living carefree in the present.
At the beginning of the middle of the film, the idle middle school life and the close friendship with the heart have an unexpected unfolding.
In order to be with her long-desired senior (Guo Zhibo), Hua lied about a big lie of "amnesia", began to drift away from Alice, and almost turned against each other; moreover, happiness based on lies made Hua less confident and more suspicious, and in the end she only lived more unreliably.
On the other hand, without the company of her friends, Alice must also begin to face the warmth of her broken family, the frustration of repeated failures in auditions, and the strong emotions that are suppressed in her heart but cannot be expressed; the emptiness and confusion of the increasingly occupied soul make her gradually lose her enthusiasm for life.
On the surface, this is the story of two good sisters competing for the same boy; in fact, the conflicts and dilemmas faced by the two girls in the movie all foreshadow the "death of youth".
However, the place where Iwai Shunji's films are often fascinating is that he always narrates these daily chores and life fragments with a slow pace, warm light and soft soundtrack (Iwai Shunji even does the work of the soundtrack), so the youth and madness in them, in the eyes of the director, have become the breath and vitality of life that emits a glittering light, as if those stupidities and embarrassments are unconditionally tolerated.
"Ballet", as an element that runs through the whole story, symbolizes (the director believes) the most precious thing in the young years: companionship. (Isn't that what "youth" really means?) ）
Because of her selfishness for a while, she broke through the catastrophe of love and friendship, but the happy memories of the past and Alice in the dance troupe made her mention the courage to sincerely bless her friends, and also learned to bear the consequences of her childish actions; and Alice, who lost the direction of life, also danced ballet due to fate, and found her enthusiasm for life again.
Two naïve and ignorant girls, after experiencing a series of earth-shaking changes in their lives, realized how beautiful the past time of sticking together all day long was, and how precious it was to be willing to stay behind to appreciate and accompany their friends after everyone had left.
Until this moment, Flower and Alice can really walk out of the girl's dream and take another step towards "maturity".
But on the other hand, after knowing how to cherish each other, even if both of them grow up, "youth" will always survive between the two.