Ginger Boy
(2025)

Ginger Boy | Separated 

This year’s Cannes Film Festival rightfully honoured Japanese director Miki Tanaka’s short film GINGER BOY with one of the three coveted La Cinéf Selection awards.

GINGER BOY is the second film I’ve seen in 2025, the first being A24’s Friendship, which examines male friendship in ways we don’t typically get on screen. Normally it’s laughs and breakups just to make up, but these two films provide fresh perspectives on male relations and how, for some, friendships are a crutch, and for others, they can become an inconvenience.

In this story we have two friends who grew up together; one became a regional banker, and the other is an aspiring filmmaker. They reunite in Tokyo, far removed from their treasured high school days, to learn that they’re not the same people they once were, as their lives are taking them in two completely different directions. Kura, the aspiring filmmaker, aims to relive the glory days of their youth by drinking and partying with girls, but Kishida, the regional banker, can feel the burden of his workplace responsibilities holding him back from committing to the fun being offered to him.

You witness the longevity of what these two once had carry them along for the first half, then the foundation of that longevity begins to slowly decay in the second, which brings to light the fundamental differences in the lives they’ve come to live.

I found GINGER BOY to be genuinely simple in story, yet deeply effective in its execution.

It’s an odd headspace to be in when you realize the longevity of a friendship has come to outweigh the necessity of it.

We have two friends, Kura and Kishida, who have become a sort of reflection for the other, one for a life not lived and the other for a life that has passed him by. When someone becomes a regular part of your life and then suddenly what matters to you shifts and they become a representation of what you once were and not who you’re trying to be (or are becoming), that can be an awkward space to be present in.

I remember when I was partying/clubbing every Friday and Saturday; the joy of those three to four hours was all that mattered, and then one day I looked around at everyone having the same joy that we always had, yet it wasn’t hitting the same for me. It was the same people, the same environment, but for whatever reason there was a sad epiphany that I had outgrown this moment in time.

Kishida has that sudden realization as well. In the beginning he didn’t know what he was walking into, but by the end he knew what he had to walk away from.

The one part of this story that didn’t work for me was the bipolar, schizophrenic aspect of everything going on. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to convey the long-term effects of alcoholism or a deeper-rooted mental instability; regardless, it didn’t need it and overdramatized something that was already working.

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that there is untapped story potential when it comes to male friendships and that, as fun as bromantic buddy movies are, it may be time we dissect other dimensions to those relationships. Miki Tanaka’s directing style makes the present feel like a memory and the past feel like another lifetime in a purposeful exploration of the less talked about side of male friendships. 

 
Enjoy!

8.1/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 48 Minutes
Where: The 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Ginger Boy Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer -  June 4th, 2025.

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