Label: Universe Laser and Video Co. Ltd.
Certificate: N/A
Region: 3
Run Time: 116 mins approx
Country: Japan
Director: Takashi Miike
Stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, Tetsu Kuremura, Miyu

This is it, the movie that made Takashi Miike a star in the world outside of Japan. Back in August of 2000 one of the last movies at Frightfest was commented upon as 'not for persons of a nervous disposition.' To a certain degree this was correct but compared to Miike's new movies this now seems somewhat tame. However this not necessarily the best way to start. By the time this reached western shores Miike was already well established in Japan, and had quite a few movies to his name. The difference comes in the fact that this was his first full on cinematic release. It was made clear in everything about the film from the cinematography to the writing to the acting.

Right for those that don't know here's a quick rundown of the story. The film starts out with a guy (Shigeharu) who lives alone with his son. He decides he wants to remarry since his wife died and a producer friend of his suggest setting up a fake program and holding auditions for it. While they are auditioning for the program he can look for his perfect woman. Almost straight away he finds her (Asami). It all seems like the perfect plan, and for the first three quarters of the movie it moves along extremely well, almost like a soppy romantic movie with all the usual sweet cute little things. But the occasional crazy moment intertwined with the romance creates a strange atmosphere that makes you very apprehensive of the woman, and with good cause. These crazy moments become more pronounced as the film progresses and they slowly reveal the true nature of her character. Then they decide to go away together for a weekend, but during this holiday she disappears which prompts him to search for her. As Shigeharu does this he slowly starts to unravel a particularly evil past that surrounds her. As he figures out more about her his producer friend tells him to let it be and forget about her. He does this and initially nothing happens, but one night he comes home and after a sip of bourbon falls to the floor completely unable to move. At this point Asami reappears and reveals her true intentions. The film takes a vicious turn at this point as she becomes a torturer of extreme measures. For the next 20mins she tortures him in ways that would scare even the most dedicated sado-masochist. As you can tell this isn't a movie that has a happy ending.

This movie is disturbingly elegant; it plays on ballet a lot within the story and within the look of the film. Although very dark in places the film is very bleached and white, in fact throughout most of the film Asami wears either white or light clothes. Maintaining that idea of virginity and femininity, a sort of purity that is smashed at the end of the film. Almost all of the camera work is very long and slow creating that ballet like elegance I mentioned earlier, but it also builds this sense of foreboding. The only time within the movie that this style changes is in the flashes of evil, of the past that surrounds Asami. The style becomes far more intense in these momentary occurrences, they become dark, with a lot of intense red, or neon lighting and normally with very sharp editing creating very harsh images that leave a indescribable feeling of unease.

The writing is the place that this film lets itself down. Although the ending comes as more of a shock due to the romantic lead in, it feels that in places some of this could have been cut down. There are sequences that seem far too long and get either repetitive, or make needless sub-plots that have no kind of resolution. It's odd, the film in every other sense seems so well polished and like many modern directors in the west it seems they have concentrated more on the visuals than the meat of the script. The story is fantastic and for the most part there are no problems in the script, but I think they could have been more harsh on the script and cut down on the running time.

All in all I think this was an enthrallingly horrendous movie, you're taken through a sweet love story only to be chewed up and spat out at the end. If anything it taught me to be vary apprehensive of oriental women that you know nothing about. Especially if they own any needles!

- Dr. Octopene

EXTRAS
As with most of the Hong Kong release DVD's I have reviewed this has no extras, just standard still image menu's, chapter selection and subtitles. That's about it unfortunately.