‘The Color of the Sun’ Review: Teen Angst and Alienation Get a Sensuous Study in Okinawa

Venice: Xavier Tera's alternatingly unsettling and languorous debut lingers on a Japanese teen's fixation on a more self-assured American military brat. Both understand each other's language, but neither speaks it.

Anyone experiencing the first brushes against their own queerness in adolescence or teenage years has stared down (or literally up at) a slightly older, more self-assured, and legibly straight person whose beauty and confidence throw your life into a toxic cyclone of self-doubt and questioning.

Writer/director Xavier Tera’s sensuous debut feature, “The Color of the Sun,” situates this coming-of-age phenomenon in 2012 Okinawa, where native people (the Ryukyu) live in close proximity to the vast American military presence still holding out well, well past World War II. Kamei (Naoto Shimajiri) is also about to share a similar proximity with the blond-headed Colin (West Mulholland), who’s new around these parts and has the looks and swagger to shatter psyches.

Canadian filmmaker Tera shaped the story out of his own experience moving from Tokyo to Okinawa during COVID. There, he encountered firsthand the parallels between America’s postwar influence on Japan and that of French and British colonialism in his own home country. “The Color of the Sun” counts Tony-nominated playwright, screenwriter Jeremy O. Harris among the producers. The filmmakers have wrangled a great deal of talent on all sides of the camera, with Shimajiri’s combustibly internalized performance as an angsty teen a particular standout. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the Thai cinematographer who frequently works with Luca Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, crafts sweat- and sun-dappled images that feel baked under the weight of humidity and languor and repressed longing. You can feel the traces of hormones emanating off the screen, as Kamei’s fixation on Colin takes more bluntly sexual turns.

It’s summer break, the last one between the end of high school and the start of adulthood, where so much is on the line, and Kamei is in a spiritually torpid state. His situationship with Sayaka (Yuma Taira) is running in circles and out of fumes. Their closeness feels more like a friendship were it not for the awkward sexual overtures they attempt on one another. Kamei is meanwhile still processing the death of his father, and his grieving isn’t helped by spending time with his grandfather helping to build a community center. Absenteeism and a lack of mentorship and nurturing appear to run in the family, as Kamei and his grandfather’s relationship feels incredibly strained, and Kamei’s stay-at-home mother is entirely feckless (and underwritten, but in a strangely tragic way that works to the final coda’s benefit).

You’d think that in this fateful particular summer, Kamei might be hungry for the fruits of new experiences. But he seems profoundly dead inside, visibly depressed, and uncomfortable in his own skin. Until Colin steps onto the main island off one of the nearby American military bases, and he and Kamei form what is the definition of an unlikely friendship. Colin doesn’t speak Kamei’s language, but he can understand it. Ditto, Kamei. So all their conversations unfold in Japanese and English, with the potential for what they really mean to get lost in translation.

One of the film‘s standout sequences brings decidedly “Y Tu Mamá También” vibes into the mix, as Colin and Kamei and their friends watch porn on the TV late at night, in a parent-emptied house, and start masturbating in each other’s presence. It’s extremely uncomfortable, Larry Clark-adjacent stuff, but Xera handles the scene with the utmost care, laser-beaming on Kamei’s cascade of uncertain emotions and mixed feelings about Colin dovetailing with a vulnerability to peer pressure.

At nearly a full two hours, “The Color of the Sun” could’ve benefitted from more editorial discipline, especially as Kamei’s inner angstiness to the point of dead silence in many scenes becomes frustrating to watch. Until he finally does combust. There’s a bit of cumbersome symbolism around the title and Kamei’s issues with colorblindness, though they do pay off in a rather moving final shot. Kamei’s attraction to Colin borders on toxic, which Tera’s direction wisely conveys with visual cues rather than narrative exposition — even if you might find you want just a little bit more.

A nighttime beach sequence finds Mukdeeprom doing much of the storytelling, slowly creep-zooming in on a bonfire as the two boys fight around it in a way that’s sinister but also playfully charged. Is it that they both want the same girl, or that they want each other through that girl? Tera opens up both doors, as “The Color of the Sun” is never especially declarative about Kamei’s sexuality (which is very much of the fashion of these queer coming-of-age pieces lately). What does feel declarative about this film, however, is its assuredness in capturing the tension between identity and nationality. Colin and Kamei don’t really belong anywhere, but here they are, and on an island of all things, in the last summer of youth — in all its cruelty and hormonal stickiness, which “The Color of the Sun” captures evocatively, bringing you back to that time.

Grade: B

“The Color of the Sun” premiered at the 2026 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.