By Ray Sawhill
The 40ish Takashi Miike is a brilliant maniac who makes four or five movies a year, yet seldom makes more than one movie in the same style. “Audition,” his best-known film, suggests a splatterfest as directed by the meditative Yasujiro Ozu; it’s one of the most horrifying movies I’ve ever seen. “Ichi the Killer” is whirling, sadistic gangster gore; I liked it a lot better than John Woo’s movies, and its virtuosity and flamboyance make poor Quentin Tarantino look like an overdeliberate wannabe. “The Happiness of the Katakuris” is one of the strangest musicals ever made, an attempt to fuse a dysfunctional-family black-comedy with “The Sound of Music.” The elements don’t gel, to say the least, but the film is nothing if not daring.
Though it isn’t in a league with “Audition” or “Ichi,” “Visitor Q” is also well worth a look. It’s a camp comedy about a mysterious stranger who moves in with a screwloose Japanese family. Dad’s a washed-up reality-TV show host who’s desperate for another hit. Sis turns tricks, Bro is routinely beaten up by his chums, and Mom gets a sexual thrill from having her breasts milked. Bodily fluids play a leading role. Sexual encounters of the strangest kind are lingered over.
The film — which Miike shot on next to no money, in a week, on digital video — is like one of John Waters’ grotesque-family comedies, only far more intense. It’s also, at least at first, considerably more bewildering; for the film’s opening 30 minutes, The Wife and I felt completely disoriented. (The Wife, a much more devoted Japanese filmbuff than I am, likes to giggle and mutter “Caucasion not understand” during such opaque passages.) But the film’s storylines finally sort themselves out, and as they do the action becomes ever more nutty and funny.
- Midnight Eye interviews Miike.
- A video interview.
©2004 by Ray Sawhill
Ray Sawhill 