Boy's Choir

The early 1970s. Shy and stuttering, Michio (Ito) is sent to a Catholic orphanage when his father dies and there befriends Yasuo (Toma), a boy soprano who draws him into the school choir. These volatile kids are pulled into political activism by a fateful encounter with the ex-lover of their choirmaster, a woman on the run from the police. There's something endearingly barmy about a project to trace the roots of an entire generation back to the '70s crazes for the Vienna Boys' Choir and leftie nihilism, and first-time director Ogata almost makes his thesis stick. But he's helped more by strong and committed performances from the two leads than by the script, which lurches from cliché (will his voice break before the concert?) to crude shock effects (severed limbs from a suicide bomber rain down).