Starring: Nozomi Sasaki, Shosuke Tanihara Director: Yuri Kanchiku Category: IIB (Japanese)
Japanese cinema has long offered films that expose the unfettered cruelty of its young, ranging from Nagisa Oshima's Sing a Song of Sex (1967) to Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001).
And, for at least its first 15 minutes, My Rainy Days seems like yet another addition to the genre, with a brief prologue touching on teen pregnancy and abortion, followed by a sequence in which a weak, nerdy schoolgirl is saved from bullies and taken in hand by three of her Lolita-like classmates.
The schoolgirl is then gently inducted to the world of clubbing and fashion, and asked by the clique's leader, Rio (Nozomi Sasaki, right), to seal their friendship (one that's based on 'defilement and impurity', she says) by working alongside them as call girls.
Rio grimaces to her friends as the newbie bear hugs her in gratitude - it's just another day's recruiting work for this leader of a school prostitution ring.
And, just when one expects the 27-year-old, first-time director Yuri Kanchiku to explore the dangerous schisms beneath Rio and her friends' line of work - the Chinese title of the film is Angels for Hire - the film takes a U-turn and morphs into a saccharine and disturbingly sanitised romance.