The Cinematheque

“Obayashi’s best romance film, a deeply bittersweet portrayal of a romantic triangle between a girl, Miyo, a boy, Koo, and his motorcycles.”

Hal Young, Senses of Cinema

“Some guys have vividly coloured dreams, but mine were always in monochrome.” So begins what is likely Obayashi Nobuhiko’s most beloved movie, a branching narrative of love ending and beginning, in which desire is channelled through totems—photographs, songs, and beloved Kawasakis—that mix tenderness and danger. Koh (Takeuchi Riki) is the motorcyclist, a courier for ambulance-chasing news journalists. He meets Fuyumi (Watanabe Noriko), and then he meets Miyo (Harada Kiwako), and every sequence is torqued in and out of retrospect. The film’s energy feeds off the disreputable bosozoku culture that was burgeoning in the mid-’80s, but Obayashi’s editing is where the project’s true heart beats, across jump-cuts and the exchange of colour and black-and-white stocks. His Motorbike, Her Island belongs to no new wave, but its spirit of invention, midway through the director’s most productive decade, conjures a momentous, transcendent mix of romantic doom and rebirth.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“Fun and inventive … Obayashi’s playful experimentation with freeze-frames, alternating black-and-white and colour photography, and moody voiceovers seems right out of a French New Wave film like Pierrot le fou.”

Alexandra Coburn, Screen Slate