Following the critical acclaim of his previous features Kamikaze Girls and Memories Of Matsuko, genre-busting auteur Tetsuya Nakashima returns with Confessions, a notably darker but equally absorbing and typically idiosyncratic work, this time adapted from the award winning debut novel by Kanae Minato.
Reigning in his impulse to create surreal candy-coloured worlds full of chaos and confusion, with Confessions, Nakashima opts instead for an intense drama throbbing with dark emotions and powered by a savage central performance.
Takako Matsu (K-20: Legend Of The Mask) stars as Yuko Moriguchi, a middle-school teacher whose 4-year-old daughter is found dead. Shattered, she finally returns to her classroom only to become convinced that two of her students were responsible for her daughter's murder. No-one believes her, and she may very well be wrong, but she decides, nevertheless, that it's time to take her revenge.
What happens next is all-out psychological warfare waged against her students in an attempt to force them into confessing what she knows in her heart to be true: they are guilty and must be punished.
Brilliantly building the psychological tension from the film’s very start before pulling out all the stops for a devastating and explosive finale, Nakashima has produced what is arguably his most mature and impressive work to date. A superb script, excellent performances from a fine cast and a perfectly pitched soundtrack (that includes tracks by Radiohead, acclaimed Japanese experimental rock band Boris, and this year’s Mercury Prize winners,The XX) make Confessions one of the most original and impressive films of the year.
Film: Confessions
Release date: 18th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Takako Matsu, Masaki Okada, Yoshino Kimura
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Studio: Third Window
Format: Cinema
Country: Japan
No comments:
Post a Comment