Japanese Horror Week at the Roxie

In the week leading up to Halloween, the Roxie had a five film Japanese horror series.  I saw four out of the five films in the series.  I missed Kairo (Pulse) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.  A few weeks later, the Roxie showed another of Sion Sono's films - Tokyo Tribe.

Audition starring Ryo Ishibashi & Eihi Shiina; directed by Takashi Miike; Japanese with subtitles; (1999)
Ju-on:  The Grudge starring Megumi Okina & Misaki Ito; directed by Takashi Shimizu; Japanese with subtitles; (2002)
Noriko's Dinner Table starring Kazue Fukiishi, Ken Mitsuishi, Yuriko Yoshitaka & Tsugumi; directed by Sion Sono; Japanese with subtitles; (2006)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man starring Tomorowo Taguchi & Kei Fujiwara; directed by Shinya Tsukamoto; Japanese with subtitles; (1989)
Tokyo Tribe starring Akihiro Kitamura, Shôta Sometani & Ryôhei Suzuki; directed by Sion Sono; Japanese with subtitles; (2014)

Audition was my favorite.  Shigeharu (Ryo Ishibashi) is a widower who is urged by his teenage son to begin dating again.  A film producer friend of his devises a plan.  They put out a casting call for a part as the new girlfriend of a widower and Shigeharu will use the pretext of the audition to choose a new girlfriend.

Shigeharu is immediately taken with Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), a quiet woman whose résumé & audition hint that still waters run deep.  Takashi Miike's films tend to be bizarre but he helms Audition on a more traditional course.  The film allows the relationship to develop in parallel with the sense that Asami is a murderous psychopath.  Actually, the audience becomes aware of Asami's true nature long before Shigeharu but Miike toys with the audience as if he were Alfred Hitchcock.

This all leads up to a memorable torture scene which is punctuated by piano wire and Asami's incongruous laughter.  Eihi Shiina (Tokyo Gore Police and Outrage) shines in the film.  Ranging from shy & repressed to maniacal, Shiina makes a memorable impression.  Audition is one of the more accessible Miike films and makes me wonder what he could do if he dialed back the weirdness factor on many of his films.

Ju-on:  The Grudge was the third film in the Ju-on series but the first released in the US.  The premise is that a ghost or evil spirit resides at a house in Tokyo.  The origin of the ghost is the murder of a woman by her jealous husband.  The spirit resides in the house and as people come in contact with the house the spirit eventually kills them.  The film juggles half a dozen storylines as residents of the house, a social worker, a former police officer and others are stalked by the spirit.  There were a few creepy moments but overall, I was mild about  Ju-on:  The Grudge.

Since seeing Sion Sono's Love Exposure in 2011 (at the Roxie), I've made it a point to see his films if they screen in the Bay Area.  Noriko's Dinner Table is a prequel to one of Sono's most well known films - Suicide Circle which I haven't seen.  Noriko's Dinner Table is a strong entry in Sono's filmography.

The titular Noriko (Kazue Fukiishi) is a teenager in a small town.  She feels stifled by her environment and yearns to go to university in Tokyo.  Her father Tetsuzo (Ken Mitsuishi) is against this since a neighbor's daughter went to Tokyo and got pregnant.  Noriko becomes despondent over her situation and takes refuge in an internet chat room where teenagers share their problems.  Inspired by Ueno54, Noriko's runs away to Tokyo.  Meeting Ueno54 IRL, Noriko discovers her real name is Kumiko (Tsugumi).  Kumiko works as an actress for I.C. Corp. which provides role playing scenarios for its clients.  Noriko quickly joins I.C. Corp. whose scenarios range from mundane to erotic to bizarre.

Meanwhile, Noriko's younger sister Yuka (Yuriko Yoshitaka) feels some of the same ennui as Noriko and active in the same chat room as well.  Yuka decides to run away to Tokyo to join I.C. Corp but she leaves behind a story & other clues for Tetsuzo to find.  Yuka's disappearance leads to the girls' mother's suicide.  Obsessed with discovering what happened to his daughters, Tetsuzo (a newspaper reported) follows the clues left by Yuka and through an intermediary, schedules a role playing appointment with I.C. Corp.  He arranges for Kumiko to play his wife and Noriko & Yuka (now using pseudonyms) to play his daughters.  He rents a house in Tokyo which is similar to the one the girls grew up in and moves the furniture from his house to the rented house.  This sets up the finale which is both bloody & poignant.

With NDT, Sono is in his element.  He excels when he mashes up genres and takes small stories and gives them epic treatment.  In NDT, Sono throws in a non-linear plot which puts the audience in a disjointed mood that parallels the feeling of the characters on screen.  Nominally a horror film, NDT mixes in trenchant social commentary with limited blood and gore.  There is a reference to 54 school girls jumping in front of a subway train in an act of mass suicide.  This was the central plot device in Suicide Circle.

Not entirely satisfying, Noriko's Dinner Table is nonetheless a worthwhile film in its own right and particularly so for fans of Sono as the audience is able to glimpse effective & successful scenes of his cinematic ambition.  Sono direction is tremendous at times through his ability to infuse scenes with tension...and humor...and more tension.

I don't think words can adequately describe Tetsuo: The Iron Man.  The works of David Cronenberg come to mind but Iron Man almost completely dispenses with dialog and the plot is minimal.  The scenes are mostly chase scenes and almost stop motion in appearance.  A man slowly transforms into a metal clad entity while he is chased, raped and otherwise attacked.  Set to a soundtrack of industrial noises and a "heavy metal" soundtrack, I was glad that it clocked in at 67 minutes.

Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe is unlike anything else I have seen from him.  By my count, Tokyo Tribe is the 8th Sono film I have seen (all in a theater).  First off, Tokyo Tribe is a musical which limits it and makes the audience less able to suspend disbelief.  However, the plot is such that setting it to song doesn't really make it less believable.  Delirious is a word I would use to describe the film.  In a not-too-distant Tokyo, anarchy rules and the criminal gangs (or tribes) co-exist in a tense detente.  I can't even remember why the truce is broken but the tribes rise up against the preeminent tribe and march en masse to their stronghold.  All this is set to techno and rap songs.  Along the way, there is a whole host of characters who are memorable for a day or two.  I recall a lot of scantily clad females.  I remember one of the villains seemed to be motivated by his insecurity about the size of his penis.  There was a Bruce Lee/Kill Bill homage.  Riki Takeuchi as Buppa, the flamboyant Yakuza boss of the most powerful tribe, is the most memorable of the bunch.  I can't recommend Tokyo Tribe and at 2 hours it dragged at times.  It's one of those films that leaves your scratching your head at what you just saw and how the film ever got made in the first place.  It was mildly satisfying immediately after seeing it but two weeks later I have little memory of long stretches of the film.

2013 San Francisco Japan Film Festival

The 2013 San Francisco Japan Film Festival was held at the Viz from July 27 to August 4.  This was the inaugural year for this festival.  The film festival was held in conjunction with the annual J-Pop Summit.

Lesson of the Evil starring Hideaki Ito; directed by Takashi Miike; Japanese with subtitles; (2012) - Official Website

Helter Skelter starring Erika Sawajiri; directed by Mika Ninagawa; Japanese with subtitles; (2012) - Official Website

Himizu starring Shôta Sometani & Fumi Nikaido; directed by Sion Sono; Japanese with subtitles; (2011) - Official Website

The executive director of the festival is Manami Iiboshi.  I think she has been programming at the Viz since day one.

The three screenings were well attended.  My only logistical recommendation is to line the film patrons up outside the building.  As I exited one film, they had queued the audience for the next film on the stairwell leading to the basement theater.  The audience that was exiting had to go up the same stairway.  A third line of people were trying to walk down the stairs to buy tickets.  It was very crowded and chaotic.

Lesson of the Evil is a return to form from prolific director Tatashi Miike.  In other words, Lesson of the Evil is violent and bloody.  In a nutshell, a sociopathic high school teacher (Hideaki Ito) kills his students one-by-one at school.  The film reminded me of those 1980 slasher films.  In this case, the school is having some sort of festival so the students are there all night to decorate their exhibit.  The teacher locks the doors and kills them to cover his own botched murder while framing another teacher.  Stylish but lacking some of the dark humor I would have liked in a film like this, Lesson of the Evil wasn't bad for what it was.

Helter Skelter wasn't a great film but it was certainly memorable.  I'm not sure why they chose a title so closely associated with the Charles Manson murders but this Helter Skelter had nothing to do with those events.  Lilico (Erika Sawajiri) is Japan's most popular fashion model who is branching out into films.  Her beauty is the result of experimental plastic surgery which requires her to return for additional treatments or her body will rot away.  That plot device was actually unnecessary but I suppose the rot on the outside is indicative the rot on her inside or on her soul.

Lilico is extremely manipulative and abusive towards her assistant (nice performance by Shinobu Terajima) but also a victim of her exploitive modeling agency and own insecurities.  As her surgical enhancement break down, so does her mental state as we watch her descent.  It's like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Director Mika Ninagawa (a well regarded fashion photographer in Japan) does tell the story in a conventional narrative.  Instead, we have this fevered film which bounces from the colorful, outlandish and garish set pieces.  Ninagawa makes great use of color and a classical music soundtrack.  I recall several scenes vividly - Lilico having a nervous breakdown on television while hallucinating blue butterflies, Lilico in a bathtub full of colorful pills, Lilico in all white stabbing herself in the eye and her red blood splattering against the white, etc.

Along the way, the film offers social commentary on society's obsession with youth and beauty and the media's need to create and destroy personalities.

To put Helter Skelter in baseball terms, Ninagawa took a mighty swing and sent the ball to the warning track.  Helter Skelter was almost something great.  The film was a little too rococo to focus on more than the images.  Erika Sawajiri lets goes for broke as well.  Maybe a little more restraint by the director and lead actress would have served the film better but as the title indicates, there is little place for restraint or subtlety in Helter Skelter.  I have no regrets or complaints though.  I'm glad I saw this film and look forward to the next film by Ninagawa or Sawajiri.

Himizu is the 5th film directed by Sion Sono which I have seen.  It's different from the previous films.  Himizu is set in a post-tsunami wasteland.  That's similar to The Land of Hope which was released a year after Himizu.  For long stretches, Himizu takes place in the lead character's mind as he seems to be having a psychotic episode.  That gives Himizu a disjointed feel which was not quite as prominent in his previous which were bizarre and at fantastical but hewed closer to a more traditional narrative structure.

Shôta Sometani is Yuichi Sumida, a junior high boy whose personal credo is "Normality Rules!"  Fumi Nikaido is Chazawa, a female classmate whose crush on Sumida borders on stalking.  Early on Sumida's mother abandons him.  He lives in a shack on the shore of some body of water and there is a small camp of squatters living in tents and shanties on his land who are his de facto family.  Along with the ever present Chazawa, the group forms an extended family and life is relatively happy if not bizarre.  Sumida's long absent father shows up looking for money.  He owes the yakuza money and when he skips town, the yakuza hold Sumida personally responsible for his father debt.

At this point, Sumida's train goes off the rails.  He gets a gun and there is a parallel subplot involving a teenage boy who stabs some people on a train.  It's unclear (and unimportant) if that is "real" or a figment of Sumida's imagination.  It's clear that Sumida is full of anger and frustration and he is not willing to let those who care about him help.  This sense of isolation is emblematic of teenage angst as well as the physical isolation created by the Fukushima nuclear accident.  The effects of the tsunami and radiation leak are constantly in the background.  Sono layers on his typical flourishes of oddballs, hyper-intense characters and random acts of violence and other crimes.

Himizu is obviously a Sono film but is off kilter which is saying a lot for Sono film.  Off kilter of off kilter does not make normal but two degrees of bizarre but no one goes to a Sono film expecting normalcy.  Sometani gives an impressive performance as Sumida; it looks like it was hard work.  Nikaido steals the show with her quirky, equally unstable character.

Himizu means mole in Japanese; as in a small, furry rodent, not as in a skin growth.

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Last summer (I know it's a long time ago), I saw Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai at the 4 Star. 

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai starring Eita; directed by Takashi Miike; Japanese with subtitles; (2011) - Official Facebook

Hara-Kiri is a remake of a Harakiri (1962), which I saw at the Balboa many Decembers ago when it was a rep house and they held a Samurai film series.  The 1962 film starred Tatsuya Nakadai and was directed by Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition trilogy).

Directed by the prolific Takashi Miike, Hara-Kiri is faithful to Harakiri as I recall.  The plot involves a ronin (or masterless samurai) in the 17th century.  The crucial element of the plot which may be lost on Western audiences is the samurai code of honor or bushido.  These ronin had lost their way of life and many fell into poverty.  According to the film, one "scam" involved a ronin going to the house of a Lord or head of a clan and asking to commit ritual suicide on the premises since they have fallen on such hard times and lost their honor.  Typically, the ronin would be given a small amount of money to go away.  No one wanted to be bothered with the grisly details of death and cleanup.  The ronin would happily accept the money since it was his original intention.  The downside is that word would spread and the house would receive a steady stream of ronin trying to get a handout.

This is what happens in Hara-Kiri except the majordomo (the master is away) takes the ronin up on his offer much to his surprise.  Determined to go through with the bluff in order to maintain his remaining honor, the samurai commits suicide with a bamboo sword (he has sold his real sword).  The majordomo and the other samurai cruelly watch as the suicide which should be quick, is agonizingly extended by the dull edge of bamboo.  We later learn the baclstory of that ronin which includes a newborn and ill wife which puts his actions in a different light.  The second half of the film involves the ronin's father-in-law (also a ronin) avenging his death by approaching the house with the same suicide request and expecting the same response.

The film is quite damning of the hyprocrisy of the samurai and their code of honor.  This is the same message as the original film.  Actually, I was hard pressed to see the difference between the two films.  In Miike's version, the father-in-law does battle with a bamboo sword which I don't recall from the older version.  Miike's version also spend more time on the backstory and showing the grinding poverty in which the ronin lived and the sumptuous luxury of the samurai and their master.  This results in Hara-Kiri feeling more melodramatic than the orginal which didn't cast the samurai as quite so sadistic. 

Mildly appreciative of Miike's work, Hara-Kiri is my favorite work of his so far.  His last several films have shifted to more traditional storytelling techniques and narrative structures.  Unlike 13 Assassins, he dispenses with special effects and large battle sceens.  This makes Hara-Kiri a more personal tale which the audience can more easily relate to with universal themes about honor, wealth disparity, love and revenge.