Early in his career Akihiko Shiota became known for films about young people that ventured into extremes, from the social margins to sexual aberrations. This culminated with “Harmful Insect,” a 2001 film starring Aoi Miyazaki as a seventh grader with an absent father and suicidal mother, who becomes an outcast when rumors circulate that she has had a romantic relationship with a male teacher. The film won a shelf of prizes and launched Miyazaki to stardom.
Two decades later, Shiota once again depicts a girl growing up too fast, too soon in “The World of You.” Based on his original script, the film is similar to “Harmful Insect” in laying on the catastrophes with a heavy hand while refraining from tear-jerking bathos.
This time, however, the film’s narrative engine is an intense and unbalanced friendship that is all-consuming to one of the principals, if puzzling or objectionable to those around her. The protagonist’s worshipful infatuation may seem over the top, but she is nonetheless a real, familiar type, played with sharp-eyed focus by Yuzumi Shintani, a former member of the idol-pop group Sakura Gakuin. Whether the film will propel her to fame is hard to say, but she delivers a performance that burns with commitment, scorching those who doubt or oppose her character’s devotion to her love and her goal.