Fridae

The high school film is just about as long in the tooth in Japan as it is in America. Over here, it's normally done as a coming-of-age drama where everyone in the class finds something inspiring to do as their senior year class project, something which offer life lessons as well as an awareness of one's self-worth as well as metaphorically, one's place in larger society.

In Runway Beat, the hoary old genre gets a somewhat invigorating twist – the project of our graduating class is none other than a teen street fashion show, held by your standard troupe of assorted Japanese youth and headed by the new transfer student and cheerful teen prodigy (Koji Seto), whose gorgeous sense of fashion and pedigree as an atelier brat (with daddy issues!) allows him to carry off outrageous stuff like wearing a skirt on the first day of school – and every day after.

Just like its source material (a popular novel serialised on cellphone SMS in Japan), Runway Beat is equal parts conventional narrative and escapist entertainment as it is quirky, different, and absorbing. We've seen teens in this genre excel in various sports or start a business but we haven't actually seen too many youths celebrate their creativity and individuality in this fashion before. As a bonus, the film's depiction of the process of putting on a runway show should be an opener to those interested in the fashion industry.

Runway Beat boasts of a young cast that is easy on the eyes, a story that is inspiring to youths, while putting out a unusual variation on a very conventional genre. It'll be fine for a date movie.