The Colours Within review – hits with the power of a dodgeball

The creation of music works especially well as a device for films about teenagers finding themselves. When performing, introverted youngsters come out of their shells, connecting to others in ways they couldn’t have imagined. In Naoko Yamada’s wonderful new animation, The Colors Within, connection is key. It’s all about characters drawn together through unusual circumstances, each unable to categorise their feelings but all persevering to express what seems intangible through songwriting. What they can’t say with words, they can at least convey with synths.

Words prove tricky for describing the conceit at play with the film’s primary protagonist, Totsuko. A shy student at a Catholic girls’ school, she has the ability to see people as colours. Each person has a different aura, visualised as a watercolour mist, where consistently-clever sound design aids in translating what every shade of red, yellow or green might mean in her unique way of processing the world. This is one way in which the film can be read as a rumination on neurodivergent experience, though the colour-vision also directly leads to a reading of the film as a queer awakening, in an environment where religion and other pressures stifle exploration of such feelings.

In what plays like a romcom meet-cute, Totsuko is so spellbound by the beautiful blue aura emitting from schoolmate Kimi that she takes an accidental dodgeball to the face with glee. Kimi quits school for unrelated reasons, but Totsuko tracks her to her job at a used bookstore. Making awkward conversation with her guitar-playing colour-crush, Totsuko suggests a skill for piano that she doesn’t have, attracting the attention of eavesdropping boy Rui. Totsuko fibs that she and Kimi have a band, Rui expresses a desire to collaborate, and to Totsuko’s surprise, Kimi seems keen on actually making this group a reality.

As they practice at an unused church near Rui’s home, in secret from their families and teachers, music brings them together, even when their respective abilities and musical sensibilities prove odd bedfellows. But then again, you can’t find new shades for expression without mixing very different colours.

Yamada has prior form with making musical performances soar on screen, through her work on the K-On! franchise and the gorgeous heartbreaker Liz and the Blue Bird. She and regular composer collaborator Kensuke Ushio weave bits of the kids’ original songs throughout the film, though the sheer euphoric energy of their glorious concert performance still surprises. Totsuko says she wants to express Kimi’s colour through music, and the film’s finale absolutely hits with the power of a dodgeball to the face that still makes you beam uncontrollably.