Dragged out on the street by his owner for performance problems, an amnesiac, nearly mindless cyborg sex slave we’ll soon enough call Pinocchio (Haji Suzuki), crawls into the lap of also amnesiac homeless woman Himiko (played by a mysterious woman only known under the pseudonym of Onn-chan).
Himiko slowly teaches Pinocchio to speak, eventually causing a radical – and pretty icky - bodily and mental transformation in Pinocchio and herself. Also, madness in at least one of them.
At the same time, the company producing sex slaves like Pinocchio is looking to reacquire the weird freak, by any means.
This is as much clarity as the plot to Shozin Fukui’s classic piece of indie cyberpunk cinema offers. And even this is hard won, for after half an hour or so, this turns into an intense assault on senses and tastes, featuring extensive scenes of vomiting, amateur actors freaking out in ways that border on the physically difficult to watch while real-life passer-by gawk or make wide berths, wildly speeding dolly shots and hand-shaken camera, intense editing and noise, noise, noise. The film puts a heavy emphasis on the punk part of cyberpunk going for a confrontational assault on as many senses as it can touch. I’m glad smell-o-vision never took off.
This assault is leavened by a peculiar sense of humour, a nodding acknowledgement that this is all very intense, but also a bit silly – not in the way of filmmakers not taking their work seriously, but of someone recognizing there’s something fun and funny in being confrontational as well. So perhaps, this isn’t so much an assault on the audience as an invitation to allow oneself to be assaulted by it while also having a bit of fun.
It’s really a rather special movie – unless you’re trying to eat while watching.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment