Symbol (しんぼる) – one thing which stands for another, sacrificing its own nature in service of something else. Hitoshi Matsumoto waxes philosophical in his follow up to Big Man Japan. Life, the universe, and everything converge in the seemingly unrelated tales of an unsuccessful Mexican luchador, and a confused Japanese man trapped in a surrealist nightmare. As expected, these two strands eventually meet, though not quite as one might expect.
The Mexican desert, a chain-smoking nun drives erratically towards a small house in which there lives a lucha libre wrestler by the name of Escargot Man (David Quintero) who has a big fight coming up but is worried because his opponent is much younger and stronger than he is.
Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location, a Japanese man wakes up in a pair of colourful polka dotted pyjamas inside an entirely white room. The man screams and rails but gets no reply. Eventually he notices a strangely shaped protrusion on the wall and taps it, at which point a host of tiny cherubs swarms around him before returning to the wall leaving only their tiny penises poking through. The man taps more penises and a host of objects begins to flood the room, each more useless than the last until the man begins to concoct a plan of escape.
Matsumoto lets his Mexican opening drift on indefinitely before abruptly cutting to the bright white walls of the mysterious room. The Mexican vistas are warm, wide, and open as the three generation family fret over the masked father’s destiny as a luchador with grandpa comforting the youngest who finds himself bullied over his dad’s profession while the mother is concerned by her husband’s nervous mood.
The mysterious room, by contrast, contains only a lone Japanese man even if just as strangely dressed. Matsumoto does not skimp on the surrealism as the man is bombarded with a series of totally useless accessories each time he presses one of the penis switches attached to the wall. Beginning with a toothbrush, the man is gifted a bonsai tree, hundreds of chopsticks, a sun lounger, toaster, and so on, each lacking any concrete purpose for his new life in the room save making him both more comfortable and also more frustrated. Irony rules as he receives a sushi lunch with no soy sauce only for a bottle to appear as soon as he’s finished, or he’s presented with the next-but-one volume of a manga he’s been reading but remains eternally unable to acquire the missing book. Eventually he finds a method of possible escape, conducts various trial and error attempts to make it work and then discovers it only leads to a second round gamesmanship with his invisible tormentor.
Unbeknownst to the man, his actions have consequences which begin with the improbable story of the Mexican wrestler and then flood around the world as he keeps tapping switches before literally ascending to a higher plane of existence. Random events are, perhaps, the result of a random button pusher in a far off land, trying and failing to escape his own captivity. Or then again, maybe he is us, endlessly tormented by unseen forces, desperately looking for a way out but left with no other mechanism than trial and error. We follow him through “learning” to “practice” and eventually to “future”, though what he learns through his strange evolution in an Escher-like world of inescapable repetition is debatable.
Strange, absurdist and defying interpretation, Symbol is a surreal escape game played on a universal scale. Matsumoto’s message is permanently unclear and possibly a long form joke, but its playfulness and somehow goodnatured attempt at cosmological exegesis is one which evokes a puzzled smile or exasperated laughter more than irritation at its appropriately obilque coda.
Currently streaming on Mubi.
Original trailer (dialogue free)
“It’s not all about tofu!” screams the heroine of Akanezora: Beyond the Crimson Sky (あかね空), a film which is all about tofu. Like tofu though, it has its own subtle flavour, gradually becoming richer by absorbing the spice of life. Based on a novel by Ichiriki Yamamoto, Akanezora is co-scripted by veteran of the Japanese New Wave, Masahiro Shinoda and directed by Masaki Hamamoto who had worked with Shinoda on Owl’s Castle and Spy Sorge prior to the director’s retirement in 2003. Like the majority of Shinoda’s work, Akanezora takes place in the past but echoes the future as it takes a sideways look at the nation’s most representative genre – the family drama. Fathers, sons, legacy and innovation come together in the story of a young man travelling from an old capital to a new one with a traditional craft he will have to make his own in order to succeed.
Times change and then they don’t. 2001 was a strange year, once a byword for the future it soon became the past but rather than ushering us into a new era of space exploration and a utopia born of technological advance, it brought us only new anxieties forged by ongoing political instabilities, changes in the world order, and a discomfort in those same advances we were assured would make us free. Japanese cinema, by this time, had become synonymous with horror defined by dripping wet, longhaired ghosts wreaking vengeance against an uncaring world. The genre was almost played out by the time Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse (回路, Kairo) rolled around, but rather than submitting himself to the inevitability of its demise, Kurosawa took the moribund form and pushed it as far as it could possibility go. Much like the film’s protagonists, Kurosawa determines to go as far as he can in the knowledge that standing still or turning back is consenting to your own obsolescence.
Some situations are destined to end in tears. Kaze Shindo’s Love Juice adopts the popular theme of unrequited love but complicates it with the peculiar circumstances of Tokyo at the turn of the century which requires two young women to be not just housemates but bedmates and workmates too. One is straight, one is gay and in love with her friend who seems to get off on manipulating her emotions and is overly dependent on her more responsible approach to life, but both are trapped in a low rent world of grungy nightclubs and sleazy hostess bars.
When you spent your youth screaming phrases like “no future” and “fumigate the human race”, how are you supposed to go about being 50-something? A&R girl Kanna is about to find out in Kankuro Kudo’s generation gap comedy The Shonen Merikensack (少年メリケンサック) as she accidentally finds herself needing to sign a gang of ageing never were rockers. A nostalgia trip in more ways than one, Kudo is on a journey to find the true spirit of punk in a still conservative world.
Finding the sinister in the commonplace is the key to creating a chilling horror experience, but “finding” it is the key. Attempting to graft something untoward onto a place it can’t take hold is more likely to raise eyebrows than hair or goosebumps. The creators of Korean horror exercise Manhole (맨홀) have decided to make those ubiquitous round discs the subject of their enquiries. They are kind of worrying really aren’t they? Where do they go, what are they for? Only the municipal authorities really know. In this case they go to the lair of a weird serial killer who lives in the shadows and occasionally pulls in pretty girls from above like one of those itazura bank cats after your loose change.
What do you do if you’ve just directed a box office smashing, taboo busting, giant mega hit? Well, you could direct Star Wars, but if you’re Lee Joon-ik you go back to basics with a low budget, heartwarming tale of friendship and failure. Radio Star (라디오 스타) reunites frequent costars Ahn Sung-ki and Park Joong-hoon whose shared history runs all the way back to ‘80s movies 
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When it comes to law enforcement in Korea (at least in the movies), your best bet may actually be other criminals or “concerned citizens” as the police are mostly to be found napping or busy trying to cover up for a previous mistake. The Chaser (추격자, Chugyeogja) continues this grand tradition in taking inspiration from the real life serial murder crime spree of Yoo Young-chul , eventually brought to justice in 2005 after pimps came together and got suspicious enough to make contact with a friendly police officer.
Yukihiko Tsutsumi has made some of the most popular films at the Japanese box office yet his name might not be one that’s instantly familiar to filmgoers. Tsutsumi has become a top level creator of mainstream blockbusters, often inspired by established franchises such as TV drama or manga. Skilled in many genres from the epic sci-fi of Twentieth Century Boys to the mysterious comedy of Trick and the action of SPEC, Tsutsumi’s consumate abilities have taken on an anonymous quality as the franchise takes centre stage which makes this indie leaning black and white exploration of the lives of a group of homeless people in Nagoya all the more surprising.
Windows on Worlds 