A pair of lonely teens begin to find direction in their lives while investigating a mysterious phenomenon in Tomohisa Taguchi’s The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes (夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口, Natsu e no Tunnel, Sayonara no Deguchi). Adapted from the series of light novels by Mei Hachimoku, the film asks if it’s worth sacrificing the present to reclaim the past for an uncertain future, but also has a few things to say about grief and guilt and the necessity of moving on even if in this case a little further ahead than most.
The mysterious “Urashima” tunnel is so named in reference to the classic folk hero who spends a few days with a princess at the Dragon Palace and then returns home to find that it is 100 years later and everyone he knew is dead. The princess gave him a box telling him never to open it but of course he does and suddenly becomes an old man. As high schoolers Kaoru (Oji Suzuka) and Anzu (Marie Iitoyo) discover, the tunnel works in much the same way. A few seconds inside is hours out, though they say that if you reach the end your wishes will be granted. Each desiring something, the pair team up to investigate together and gradually fall in love but are also divided by the contradictory nature of their quests.
Reluctant to reveal the reasons behind her interest in the tunnel, Anzu fears that her desires are trivial in comparison to those of Kaoru who is trying to restore his family by bringing back his little sister Karen (Seiran Kobayashi) who was killed falling from a tree. Kaoru claims that he wants to see the kind of world that Karen had envisaged where everyone was happy, but is also trying to deal with his grief and guilt and looking for the restoration of a sense of stability he once had in his family. Anzu, meanwhile, is insecure in her gifts as an artist and has been rejected by her parents for her desire to make manga like her penniless grandfather. Kaoru tries to convince her that she has talent already but Anzu seems to believe that she needs once in a generation flair in order to be able to make her mark even if they get stuck in the tunnel and emerge hundreds of years later into a world in which manga no longer exists.
But as Kaoru later finds out, the tunnel only lets you take back something you’d lost. It does not grant wishes for something that never belonged to you. Kaoru never really stops to think about the practicalities of his quest such as the increased age difference between himself and Karen or how he’d explain her sudden resurrection, while Anzu doesn’t really reflect on the how meaningless her success would be if didn’t come from her own efforts even as they work together to solve the mystery of the tunnel as a way of working through their individual anxities. Though their first meeting had been frosty, the pair soon bond in their shared loneliness and fractured families but like most teenagers don’t quite have the confidence to say the big things out loud.
Taguchi makes the most of his summer countryside setting capturing the vibrancy of his surroundings from the cool blue sea to the bright yellow sunflowers near the train station while also hinting at the “boring” nature of small-town life in which there’s not much else to do than create your own adventure. Set in 2005, the film also has a meta time slip quality with its flip phones and minidisc players seemingly taking place in a more innocent age if also emphasising that the reason the teens can disappear for three days researching a tunnel is that their respective adults aren’t very bothered about what they’re doing or where they are. Each of them discover what it is they really wanted out of their mystical journey, if otherwise out of sync, as they learn to deal with their grief and insecurity before discovering the exit from the eternal summer of their youth into a less certain adulthood that no longer scares them but instead offers new opportunities amid the newfound solidarity of their togetherness.
The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes opens in UK cinemas on 14th July courtesy of All the Anime.
International trailer (English subtitles)
Images: ©2022 Mei Hachimoku, Shogakukan/The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes Film Partners