End of Summer Screenplay

by Saddletank

One Year on from the end of Whisper of the Heart. A Sequel. This is the version in a [Screenplay or Script] style. The alternative is the [Novel]. BTW, the [Novel] is much better and has more content so read that!

13. Chapter Twelve: Art

Chapter Twelve – Art

The city. An overhead view. It's morning. Red roofs, cream stucco buildings. A church clock bell chimes - it's an old world sound, reassuring, familiar.

Cut to:

A narrow old street. Market stall holders push barrows of fruit and vegetables.

Cut to:

A café. The owner is washing the pavement down with a hose. A fat middle-aged woman in black goes by, they greet each other.

Cut to:

The dining room of the Hotel Alfonso. Marco, looking only a little more presentable than he did last night, is wearing a white waiters apron and laying out cutlery.

Cut to:

Shizuku asleep. She turns onto one side, mumbling. Lies still for a moment then turns again onto her back. She opens her eyes.

Shizuku: "Uhhrrr…"

Cut to:

The closed balcony doors, the shutters are only slightly open and sunlight comes in in narrow slices between the slats.

Cut to:

The bed again. Shizuku sits up and slides her legs out of bed on the side away from us. She rests her elbows on her knees and puts her forehead in her hands. With an effort she stands up. She's wearing a mans pyjama jacket but no trousers. The too-long sleeves are rolled back up her forearms. The jacket is a bit short, she's just about covered - but only just. She turns and goes towards the shutters. She's a mess, there are dark marks under her eyes and her hair is all over the place.

Cut to:

Looking toward the shutters. Shizuku comes sleepily into shot from the left. She goes to the shuttered window and pulls a small metal lever at one side, the shutter slats open like a large blind and sunlight streams into the room.

Shizuku: "Nnnnnn…"

She bows her head. Then pushes the shutter doors wide open.

Cut to:

A view from outside looking back at Shizuku at the little balcony. Her sleepy face takes in the scene without reaction.

Cut to:

A view outwards now, we are seeing what she sees. Red rooftops are just below her room with trees and a brown slow moving river in the distance. Farmland lies beyond the river. To the right in the distance are the girders of the railway bridge.

Cut to:

A view of the balcony from the left, we see Shizuku leaning on the metal railing, her left profile. She leans out and gazes dozily at the view.

Seiji: "Yo! Shizuku! Good morning!"

Shizuku looks to her right. A little lower down than her room and in an upper window of the gable end wall of the academy across the courtyard we can see Seiji looking out a tiny window.

Cut to:

Close up of Seiji, we see only his head, one arm and part of his chest through the tiny window, it must be only 18 inches square. He doesn't seem to be wearing anything. He waves.

Cut to:

View beside Shizuku again. She waves back.

Shizuku: "Hi!"
Seiji (faintly): "Hey, I got the honeymoon suite!"
Shizuku: "Great balcony!"
Seiji: "See you in a while!"

His head and arm disappear. Shizuku goes back into her room.

Cut to:

View inside the room looking towards the bathroom. Shizuku comes into shot from the right. We see her from behind. She walks between the bed and the wooden banisters that protect the stairs. She unbuttons her pyjama jacket as she goes. She enters the bathroom and goes out of sight. We hear a shower running. A moment later a bare arm appears across the doorway and pushes the door shut.

Cut to:

A wooden interior door. We hear muffled steps coming downstairs. A key clicks in a lock and the door opens. Shizuku comes through. It's the door at the foot of the steep flight of stairs that lead to her attic room. She's carrying her pink bag. She turns, locks the door, tries the handle to make sure it's locked then exits the shot to the right along a corridor.

Cut to:

The courtyard. Seiji is leaning against the school building wall. The hotel door opens and Shizuku comes down the steps. Seiji comes forward and they meet by the horse trough. They hold hands, left in right, right in left.

Shizuku: "Morning!"
Seiji (obviously impressed): "Hey, you look amazing, where's the party?"
Shizuku: "Thanks" (she's wearing a short vest-top dress. She spins round for him).
Seiji: "Sleep well? How's your room?"
Shizuku: "Room's fine. I still feel a bit spaced out actually, must have slept too hard."
Seiji: "Me too. Can you believe that Signore Guarnieri left some study work in the room? I hope all the other students had it as well."
Shizuku: "When does school start?"
Seiji (looking at his watch): "Uh, about now actually. Sorry." (his face brightens) "But we have only a morning today, a sort of start up session, so I'll be free from about two o'clock."
Shizuku: "OK."
Seiji: "So meet me here again at two, right?"
Shizuku: "Sure. See you later."

She turns to camera and runs off scene toward us, waving back over her shoulder. Seiji watches her go then turns to go in school. A couple of other students are hanging around under the colonnade.

Cut to:

A narrow cobbled street. Shizuku walks away from us slowly, glancing in windows. A young man comes toward us on a moped. The moped makes a 'put-putting' sound as it goes by. He gives Shizuku a long look in the way that young men do.

Cut to:

A piazza, a church is on one side of it and Shizuku is standing in front looking up. The wall of the church is pale grey stone but is bleached by a hot sun. She turns to walk on.

Cut to:

A small park, with railings bordering the road, stone pillars either side of an entry way. Shizuku comes into shot from the right along the pavement and goes in.

Cut to:

A wooden bench under a tree by a gravel path. Shizuku comes into shot from the right and sits on the bench in the shade. She looks about, interested in what's going on.

Shizuku (waving a hand in front of her face): "Whew, hot."

She gets a book out of her bag and begins to read. A dark grey cat comes up, small, bony and thin. Shizuku sees it.

Shizuku: "Hello cat."

The grey tabby shies away and runs off.

Shizuku: "Hm. Must be a stray."

Cut to:

The Hotel Alfonso dining room. We are looking out from inside the room through a large pair of doors to a patio outside. There are more dining tables covered with white linen out there. The tables stand in bright sunshine, the colours are washed out. The short shadows tell us it's later in the day.

Cut to:

The patio. There are about six tables. Two or three of them have couples sat at them. The hotel wall is old mellow red brick and has a flowering climbing plant covering much of it. Next to the dining patio is a small garden. It's a tiny cramped plot though and the stucco wall of the adjacent property is only about 20 feet away, the patio and garden are in a narrow gap between the tall buildings. Once we get our bearings we realise that Shizuku's balcony must be directly above the patio, facing south toward the river.

Cut to:

Shizuku and Seiji sat at one of the tables. They eat a light lunch.

Shizuku: "Not what you expected then?"
Seiji: "Signore Guarnieri is dropping us in the deep end. It's sink or swim. Can you believe this morning we had to write a history of the Cremona violin making industry without referring to any books. I think he's testing us, seeing which of us is suitable to invest more of his time in." (he puts a hand to his forehead) "My head hurts."

He takes a sip of his drink.

Seiji: "I don't know how much of me you're going to see in the next three weeks. It's going to be pretty intensive. I'm sorry, maybe you shouldn't have come."
Shizuku: "No way! I love it here, the town is wonderful. Tony the hotel owner is really nice and I'd much rather sit in a park here and study than in the library back home."
Seiji: "Another thing. The class is mixed; there's four Italian guys, a Frenchman, a German, an American and me. The signore teaches in a mixture of Italian and English so as well as learning, I'm having to translate as well… Urrrggnnn…"
Shizuku (putting a hand to his shoulder): "Oh, my poor Seiji. Well after school each day I'll look after you, we'll do whatever you want. I have all day to study or write so the evenings will be your time, OK?"
Seiji: "Thanks, appreciate it."

Tony comes to their table. How he fits between the other tables without knocking them aside is something of a mystery.

Tony: "Buongiorno She-zoo-koo."
Shizuku: "Mr. Tony! Hello. This is my friend Seiji Amasawa."
Tony: "Buongiorno signorino."
Seiji: "Sir." (he bows)
Tony: "So, how are the tagliatelli, eh?"
Shizuku: "Very good. It reminds me of noodles a little bit. It's very creamy though, I don't want to get fat."
Tony (he laughs, sweat running down his face): "Get fat? On my tagliatelli, ha ha ha, impossible!"

He slaps his huge middle and walks off still laughing.

Cut to:

Later that afternoon. Shizuku and Seiji are walking along a fairly busy and narrow road. Traffic rattles by. Seiji sees a side street that goes up steeply to the left. It has shops along it. Seiji points. They stop. Then they turn and cross the road between the traffic.

Cut to:

A view looking down the sloping side street. There is no traffic here. We can see the main road at the bottom of the hill, cars pass. Shizuku and Seiji walk toward us. They stop from time to time window shopping. The street seems to be mostly antique shops, but full of expensive art.

Cut to:

A view of a shop front. Something large and red is low down in the window. Seiji and Shizuku walk into shot from the right and look in.

Cut to:

A view from inside the shop looking out at the couple. We can see the window display. There are a couple of stone cherubs, a big vase, a painting on an easel, a violin on a stand. In the centre of the window though is a large model of a red plane mounted on a polished wooden stand.

Cut to:

A close up of the model from Shizuku and Seiji's perspective. We see a slight discolouration of part of the view from the reflection on the glass. It's a single seat red seaplane with a large motor mounted above the wing in front of the pilot. The tail carries the red white and green stripes of the Italian air force.

Cut to:

A close up of a polished brass plate mounted on the wooden stand: SAVOIA S.21, 1929.

Cut to:

Shizuku and Seiji outside, their backs to us looking in the window.

Shizuku: "What a funny thing to have in an antique shop."
Seiji: "What?"
Shizuku: "That toy plane."
Seiji: "That's not a toy, I expect some devoted model maker spent hours and hours building that."

Cut to:

A close up of the models cockpit. We see that it is indeed a beautiful model, fully rigged and with intricate details inside the cockpit, the wingspan is about three feet or a metre.

Cut to:

Shizuku and Seiji outside again.

Shizuku: "But it's hardly art. Like those statues."
Seiji: "Why can't it be art?"

The couple are no longer looking at the plane but facing each other, we see the plane between them through the glass.

Shizuku: "Well art is stuff like painting, statues, even that vase maybe."
Seiji: "Sure a craftsman can spend hundreds of hours on a painting or a sculpture. Then some craftsmen make violins… and some make model planes. It's the same thing. Maybe the man who made that was an old pilot, maybe it was the plane he flew in the war, and he wanted to preserve his memories by building a model of it. We can't know anything about the motivations of craftsmen. Just because it looks like a toy doesn't mean it is."

Shizuku bends down and looks carefully at the plane again. Then she stands up.

Shizuku: "Mmmm, maybe."
Seiji: "It's more art than my violins are."

She takes out her notebook and writes in it.

Seiji: "Here we go again."
Shizuku: "Ssshh, I'm doing art."
Seiji (laughs): "Fine."

Cut to:

A view across a small piazza. Three or four cafés are around the perimeter. Awnings are extended and customers sit in the shade out of the fierce afternoon sun. In the centre is a fountain. Three fat stone cherubs cavort around a unicorn. Water jets squirt up from the edge of the stone basin. The water splashes and gurgles down over the stone figures. The far side of the piazza leads to the street of antique shops. We can see their roofs sloping off down the hill. Shizuku and Seiji come into view up the slope and enter the piazza.

Seiji: "Hey, this is nice."
Shizuku: "Mmm."
Seiji: "Let's have a drink."
Shizuku: "Sure."

Cut to:

A table outside a café. The couple sit and sip milkshakes. A cat is sat close by watching them. It's another small scrawny one, ginger this time.

Shizuku: "Here, kitty, kitty."

She calls the cat with a kissing noise. It comes a little closer but stops again.

Shizuku: "Lots of cats round here, but they all look really wild."
Seiji: "Maybe they are."
Shizuku: "Why don't people look after them, like your grandpa does with Moon?"
Seiji: "Maybe they keep the mice and rats down. If people fed them too much they'd all get fat. I can't ever remember seeing Moon catch a mouse, he's useless."
Shizuku: "Mmm."

She looks around.

Shizuku: "I love it here. Thanks for inviting me Seiji."
Seiji: "Well, we'll see if you still like it in a weeks' time after you've hardly seen anything of me."
Shizuku: "Don't worry about it. I want to explore, walk everywhere. The buildings are great aren't they, they look centuries old!"
Seiji: "I think lots of the city is sixteenth and seventeenth century."
Shizuku: "Wow. I feel like I can walk up to them and touch them and feel the stories they have to tell: wars and princes, weddings and plagues. Ideas for books are all around here. I just have to pick them like fruit off trees."
Seiji: "You're doing it again."
Shizuku: "What?"
Seiji (in a comical robotic voice): "Warning! Warning! Shizuku weirdness alert!"
Shizuku (does her booming all powerful evil witch voice): "You can mock me, O small insignificant violin apprentice! But be prepared to bow down to the Great Storyteller of the East!"

She stands up, pointing a rolled up napkin at him like a wizard about to smite him with a spell from her wand.

Seiji: "Yeah, right."