Sometimes I act like the hero of a classic Romantic novel: I sigh, sink into my living room chair and ponder deep philosophical questions like "Why is Japanese pop culture so weird?".
Today an answer to said question came to me. It's all the ghosts' and ghoulies' fault! As I have learned by watching countless Japanese horror films (I've even seen Shinjuku Ghost Story, though only the first part - I am not infinitely strong), every nook and cranny of every village, town and city (let's not start talking about the countryside) in Japan is stuffed full with ghosts, curses, demons, giant flying turtles and spirals.
The only possibility to keep sane when confronted by this kind of danger every waking hour (and I'm not sure about dreams and sleep) is to distract oneself by as much bizarre shit as possible. Well, that or tentacle rape.
This grand realization came to me while is was watching Love Ghost. In it, some poor high school kids can't even consult their favorite love oracle, Tsujiura (basically standing in front of a road-side shrine and asking the next passerby the question one wants to have answered by oracle), without coming into contact with a supernatural entity called "The Handsome Boy of Tsujiura", whose predictions of course end in premature teenage death.
All trouble starts with the arrival of Midori (Risa Goto) in a new school, back in the town she left ten years ago. The film makes a big secret of something that happened when she left, but most viewers will have solved the "puzzle" about half an hour in, although some of the later twists just don't make enough sense to be too easily predicted. And yes, you guessed it, the secret has something to do with the "Handsome Boy".
Soon after Midori's arrival, teenage hormones run amok while Midori herself has to solve the riddle of her own past.
Love Ghost really isn't that good of a film. The script is, as I said, predictable, the pacing overtly sedate and the whole thing at least fifteen minutes to long, but if you are able to be very, very patient, you'll find a few worthwhile ideas. I'd even call the middle part of the film quite successful, not as a horror film, but as a quiet portrait of teenage heartbreak that for once does not try to glamorize the crappy time that many have at a certain age. Unfortunately, the film throws away any goodwill it might have created in its final twenty minutes when it suddenly tries to transform itself into a story of redemption its first hour just can't support.
At least nobody can blame the film for wanting to be just another Japanese horror movie about a female ghost with long black hair - it's trying hard to be something different.
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2 comments:
Well, I'm glad that someone found an answer. I used to naively think that if I immersed myself in enough Japanese pop culture it would eventually stop being so baffling to me. I have since resigned myself to the fact that it will only become more and more mysterious. Hence, I am very receptive to your whole ghosts and goblins theory. Makes as much sense as anything.
And it was so easy. I was just thinking about what I would do when a blue-skinned little boy could creep put from under my bed any second. And the answer was of course: Invent Dororo!
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