Midnight Sun

2006 Japanese drama film. Starring famous Japanese artist Yui, who plays Kaoru Amane, a 16-year-old girl with a severe skin condition known as xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), which is essentially a life-threatening allergy to sunlight - as such, her social life is non-existent. Nevertheless, she spends her days mooning over a cute surfer dude she can see from outside her window, and her nights practicing guitar alone...until she happens to run into that dude during a practice session. The story snowballs from there.

Meta

In the original Japanese, the film is titled "Taiyou no Uta" (タイヨウのうた, literally "Song of the Sun"). "Midnight Sun" is the localized title.

Thoughts

Well, in discussions, I always give this movie credit for being the closest to bringing me to tears, so I suppose that artificially inflates my view of the movie some.

Ahem. Anyways.

It's dramatic, all right. The plot and characters aren't anything terribly noteworthy, but true to Asian drama form, they exploit the tried and true for all it's worth, and I'll admit I'd be impressed if you watched the entire movie without being moved in the slightest. Yui's good at her acting (not to mention singing), and I think many of us can at least imagine some connection to Kaoru (unrequited affections being probably the most widely shared emotional pain of the human race, you know?). Easy enough to make a decent movie out of.

I won't explicitly recommend the movie, but I will say that, if you have to choose between this and your average Hollywood summer movie, I'd spring for this one in a heartbeat. But if you consider yourself a sensitive person in any manner, keep a box of tissues at hand - like I said, it's pretty good at what it does.

P.S. Yui for life <3 - or at least that's what my friend would say, heh.