| Mimi Huelster |
Linda Linda Linda plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, June 19th, through Sunday, June 21st. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
The start of Linda Linda Linda (2005) is rife with misunderstandings. A series of interpersonal blunders leads to the dissolution of a high school band, leaving students Kei (Yuu Kashii), Kyoko (Aki Maeda), and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine) without a singer. They have three days until their performance at the Shiba High Holly Festival, covering songs by Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts, and they’re desperate. While the three are sitting in the sticky late-summer sun, Kei declares: “The next person who crosses the courtyard will be our singer.”
Enter Korean exchange student Son (Bae Doona), carrying a box of materials for the Festival’s Japan-Korea Culture Exchange Exhibit. Son’s recruitment into the band reads more like entrapment. Kei asks her to join by yelling across the courtyard. And Son, rightfully confused, responds “Yes” to every question (and statement). It isn’t until Kyoko rushes over to explain the situation that Son understands what she has agreed to, yelling, “No! No, no! I can’t!”
Cut to Kei, Kyoko, and Nozomi commiserating about their choice. Son is in another room listening to tracks by The Blue Hearts that the other girls have decided to cover.
“Son answered so carelessly over there,” says Nozomi.
When they check in with Son, they find her crying. The song “Linda Linda” blasts from her headphones. She agrees to sing.
***
I have been living abroad in Nantes, France, for the past five months. I was originally supposed to be here for four. By the time I return to Minnesota, I will have been here for six.
I arrived this past January as a study abroad student. I was part of a semester-long program with thirty-odd fellow American students wherein we took classes with each other and at the local university. It was a well-balanced mix of people, and we all got pretty close. I even wound up with a Franco-American boyfriend. And I got to stay with the retired parents of a woman who lived with my family nearly ten years ago, which is how I knew about Nantes in the first place.
Neither of my hosts speak English, although the husband has been picking up some words and phrases: little bird, good morning, tomorrow, my name is, black pepper, I love you. The conversations between husband and wife and I began simply. There was a lot of miming and pointing and Googling. I struggled to find the words to capture the same context and tone I would use in English, and I learned very quickly that I would have to grow comfortable with long, silent pauses. But the more we spoke, the better I noticed my French had gotten, and I felt more at ease. We began to know each other much better. I learned about their childhoods, their relationship, what they had done for work. I tried to answer as best as I could all their questions about American politics and culture. We developed our own vocabulary and communication style that only the three of us could share.
***
According to director Yamashita Nobuhiro, he had seen Bae Doona in the Korean films Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) and Take Care of My Cat (2001) and created the role of Son as an excuse to work with her. But he struggled to consider her potential experience as a foreigner working in a foreign country on a foreign film in a foreign language.
“Bae Doona seemed to have a huge dilemma about having an interpreter,” said Yamashita. “She wanted to hear directly from me, but I don’t speak either English or Korean, so we could only communicate through the interpreter. That was frustrating for her. For example, when I explain something by saying, “Do it like this,” sometimes the other kids laugh. Bae Doona didn’t understand why. But the reason for their laughter might be the director’s intention, and you can’t find that out from the script alone. That seems to have been difficult for her.”
A translation of this experience into the script happens when the band members are having a picnic on the school’s roof at night. All four are deliriously tired, having stayed up practicing for two days, and cannot stop giggling. After a while, Kei and Kyoko start teasing Nozomi until Son interrupts: “Nozomi’s no fun! Don’t laugh.”
Everyone else starts laughing even harder, with Kyoko wheezing out, “That’s rude, Son!” Now everyone is grabbing and slapping each other to stabilize themselves against their giggles, but Son slaps Kei away, so now it’s her turn to say, “That’s rude!” The scene ends with Kei, Kyoko, and Nozomi still laughing while Son looks at — or past — the other girls, visibly confused and upset. What had been an evening of bonding ended up another reminder of Son’s otherness.
***
Over time, I felt like I began to understand more about French than just the grammar rules. I started to understand jokes, the sarcasm, the tendency towards complaining when making small talk with strangers. But there were still moments where I felt as if I was living in a cultural hazmat suit. Later in the semester, I ended up at a lot of soirées with students from my boyfriend’s master’s degree program. Some made more of an effort than others to get to know me, who asked questions about topics other than Donald Trump and the amount of pesticides in American foods. But usually the get-togethers would devolve into everyone either playing a party game, during which I would have to lean over to my partner to ask for translations or whip out my phone to abuse Google Translate, or everyone discussing their classes or movies they watched as a kid or the latest update on European popular figures while I watched and listened from the corner, too unsure to jump in.
There was one time, when I was at a party like that, when I tried telling a story from when my family and I had been to Paris. I translated “in a line” as “in an ass.”
There was another time, when I was describing my visit to a nearby beach to my hosts, that I used the word frigide to describe the ocean. They later explained to me that using that word tends to imply a sexual coldness.
And another time, when I tried making a reference about Lena Dunham’s Girls with a friend of my ex. I mistakenly thought he might know about it since he spoke some of the best English out of the entire master’s group. He looked at me like I had three heads. I tried to go back to basics and explain who Lena Dunham is, and he looked at me like I had four.
***
Besides the exchange on the roof, there are two moments in Linda Linda Linda that illustrate the fact that Son will always be the outsider in a group of outsiders. The first instance is when she goes to a karaoke bar so she can practice her singing. The cashier tries explaining to Son that, in order for her to sing, she must buy a drink. Son finds this inconceivable and keeps insisting that she brought her own water bottle, she just wants to sing.
“Is this your first time coming to a place like this?” asks the cashier. There is another signature pause, another signature stare from Son. “Look,” the cashier continues, “if you don’t drink, you can’t sing.”
Son laughs. “That’s weird.”
The cashier looks incredulous. “No, it’s not.”
The second instance is much briefer, really a throwaway moment in the greater context of the film. Kyoko is revealing her crush on a guy at school, and Son is trying to convince her to share her feelings. “If you don’t tell him soon,” she says in Korean, “you’ll miss out.”
“You’re talking gibberish,” replies Kyoko.
***
I was having so much fun in my study abroad program that I decided to extend my stay for an internship, thinking the fun would only continue.
But, inevitably, all the other students left at the end of the semester, a Saturday in late April. And I got dumped the day after. And I realized after the fact that I had no idea how to say he broke up with me in French (il a rompu avec moi, in case you ever need it, God forbid).
Although the study abroad program had been all about cultural and language immersion, it became instantly clear to me how much I had relied on the other students (and my relationship) to ground me in the cultural limbo I was experiencing. Through them, I had people to discuss everything — what I had felt, seen, heard, touched, ate, smelled — in the language that I know best: English. And, maybe more importantly, we all came from similar cultural contexts. I knew which references I could make and others would understand, I knew which jokes would land in which ways, we all knew what it feels like to grow up and live in the collective trauma of the United States.
Without that, I retreated inward. In English, I struggle to shut up and listen. In French, I became a silent observer. I know I can speak, but I struggle to jump in and start. And once I do, the odds that the language I am speaking is stiff and stunted are higher than I would like to admit. And the chances that I felt truly heard by whoever I was speaking to were frustratingly slim. So why speak when you feel like no one is listening?
***
Most of the times that Yamashita chooses to place Son in a shot by herself, she is quiet, observing. In one scene, we see her peering around a corner, watching an interaction between Kei and her ex-boyfriend, Tomoki. Nozomi tries to get her attention, scolding, “Son! Son! You’re staring.” Son turns, nods, and continues to observe. It’s unclear if she didn’t understand, or if she did and chose to ignore.
In another scene — one of my favorites — Yamashita has Son break the fourth wall with her stare, following a sequence where she imagines herself introducing the rest of the group, each with their own cute but cutthroat descriptor (shy, scary, always late). She performs this routine all in Korean. When it’s her turn to introduce herself, all she says is: “Son!” And then silence. An unrealized rock star, alone onstage in an empty high school gymnasium.
***
The last thing I want to do is advertise the study abroad experience as a living Hell of ego deaths and general confusion and profound loneliness. It can absolutely be those things, but it is also a time of intense self-exploration and learning. I am the most fluent in my second language now than I have ever been in my entire life. I have had to figure out how I show up for myself when surrounded by nothing but the unfamiliar. I have fostered relationships that I hope will last lifetimes. Studying abroad has matured my empathy for those living someplace they are not from. My experience has shown me up close and personal that there are different ways of living than the American Dream. My life has been changed forever. And I am so grateful.
***
Near the end of Linda Linda Linda, Son receives an anonymous note, written in Hangul, requesting that she will meet the author. With her band mates’ encouragement, Son shows up to discover an extremely awkward and metrosexual-looking Japanese student, who confesses his love for her in poorly-rehearsed Korean. Son repeatedly answers him in Japanese, making polite smalltalk in between wide-eyed, silent staring contests. She finally rebuffs his declaration, speaking in her most confident Japanese: “I don’t dislike you, but I don’t like you, either.”
Son looks back over at her bandmates, who are spying excitedly through a window. Then, in Korean: “I want to be with them. My friends.”
“What?” Asks the boy in Japanese. “You said okay?”
Son bows and goes to join the other girls, smiling.
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon