The Homeless Student (Hoomuresu Chugakusei/ホームレス中学生) is a 2008 Japanese film based on an autobiographical novel titled "The Homeless Junior High School Student." It stars Teppei Koike, Nishino Akihiro, and Ikewaki Chizuru. The summary is as follows, taken from here with some changes made:
After a term closing ceremony, Hiroshi comes up home and finds the yellow tape saying "keep out" on the house entrance. "Dismissed," Hiroshi's father says unexpectedly and dissappears without a trace. Hiroshi suddenly becomes homeless at fourteen. He starts to spend his nights in public parks and eat cardboard to survive. Homeless life with laughter and tears. However, through the homeless life, Hiroshi learns important things as a person...
I thought this sounded promising and so I watched it, curious on how it would be portrayed. It linked a background story in with the main plot of a boy struggling to live with no home and no money. I liked how it slowly went through the process, starting from the beginning when he would seem to only go to convenience stores where he used up most of his remaining money as well as eating other "human foods" until he passed the desperation point and started to revert to other forms of sustenance such as cardboard. The gradualness of it all made me like it better as well as going through other obstacles like the lack of showers or bathrooms.
In addition to that, there were moments of hilarity that were sprinkled in but all in all, the entire movie seemed somewhat rushed towards the end where everything just suddenly came together and everything was sparkly. OK, not quite. There was a little bit of angst where the question "why did this happen to us?" appeared, but it seemed to come together rather seamlessly. This is a good thing, but it didn't end with a 'bang', if you know what I mean.
You can watch it here.
2 comments:
I haven't seen it but there's a Japanese drama airing now about a girl (Maki from Nobuta, HanaKimi, etc.) who is a homeless "internet cafe" type girl who is asked to marry a guy, merely to be mother to his adopted sons, in exchange for a non-homeless life.
What I've heard of it, it sounds like a pretty wacky drama so I don't know if I'll check it out. (HanaKimi was pushing it, for me, but this drama does sounds funny.) But thought you may be interested.
haha... I've been watching that. It's killing me to have to wait a week for the next episode to come out. >_< I dunno why I broke my rule of watching only finished dramas.
It's pretty funny and cute, and yes - wacky. :) Towards it end now, it's leveling off, but I still tune in once a week to watch.
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