skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Film: Confessions
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Distributor: Third Window
Certificate: 15
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Takako Matsu, Yukito Nishii, Kaoru Fujiwara, Masaki Okada, Yoshino Kimura
Genre: Drama/Horror/Thriller
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country of Production: Japan
Language: Japanese
Adapted from the award-winning debut novel by Kanae Minato, still high on the sugar-coated ripples of critical acclaim with his previous features Kamikaze Girls and Memories Of Matsuko, genre-busting auteur Tetsuya Nakashima returns like a scalded cat with Confessions. Gone are his trademark candy-coloured worlds, replaced by a sinister universe contaminated by disease, bullying and murder. Will Nakashima’s delicious new direction hit the sweet spot once again, or will it leave the audience with sweet Fanny Adams?
Yuko Moriguchi (Takako Matsu) is a middle-school teacher whose 4-year-old daughter is found dead in the school’s swimming pool. Convinced that two of her students were responsible for her daughter's murder, she returns to her classroom and begins a final lesson the students will never forget.
Referring to the killers as Student A and Student B, Yuko’s ramblings are at first treated as tommyrot by the children half-listening to her inane drivel. Then she reveals that two of the cartons of milk they had been drinking prior to her arrival have been laced with the HIV infected blood of her dead child’s father.
Confessions spill quicker than the milk, as each suspect reveals motives, allies, and a disturbing lack of sympathy. Will Yuko be satisfied with their acceptance of blame, knowing only too well that they aren’t old enough to be truly punished for their actions, or will she decide to end her teaching career by going out with a bang?
All films should be this pretty. Exploring the dark side of adolescence with wit and delicacy, Confessions creates a disturbingly bleak atmosphere that more than compensates for a sparse plot, further complimented by an indie soundtrack and stunning visuals by Director Tetsuya Nakashima. A film more about mood than substance, ordinary teen irritants are blended with the extreme so seamlessly here it’s frightening, as we see when, early on, Student A (a chilling turn by Yukito Nishii as Shuya) reveals his unrivalled genius by creating contraptions to torture cats and dogs and another electrifying invention to stop purse snatchers.
The other students may be flirting with the opposite sex and questioning the joys of puberty, but apart from an orchestrated fling halfway through proceedings, Shuya is far too busy devising ways to inflict pain and suffering on those that have failed to spot his superiority, praying the mother that abandoned him finally will. Meanwhile, Student B (Naoki) is so disgusted with himself for allowing his trust to be abused, he accepts his punishment, takes it on the chin, then spends the rest of the film transforming into a caveman, intent on scrubbing away any past mistakes - his mud-encrusted body a constant reminder of the horrors that fell before.
It’s certainly a haunting tale that will linger long in the memory, helped by a dry sense of humour running all the way through it (the students rendition of KC Band’s ‘That’s The Way I Like It’ is absolutely brilliant), with gruesomeness and giggles combining perfectly, culminating in a genuinely explosive denouement.
Takako Matsu’s performance as the scarred teacher is deftly restrained: her intense opening monologue is so gripping you’ll question how thirty minutes have zipped by. But Nakashima masters such a lengthy confession with ease, cutting to cold and harsh visual flashbacks, classroom mayhem and a self-contained story so beautiful it’s almost a disappointment when the new term begins.
With a script that feels like it’s followed Robert McKee’s best-selling book ‘Story’ to the letter, Confessions uses the principles of screenwriting to great effect - especially in the way of structure, with its perfectly placed inciting incident and rollercoaster second act leading to the chilling climax. Clearly helped by an artist who has already mastered the form, Nakashima soaks Kanae Minato’s script in such lush imagery you’ll gladly drown in its dreamy slo-mo sequences (at its stunning best in the pouring rain), entwined with wide-eyed acts of violence that will make the journey uncomfortable but compelling. The violence may not always be graphic in nature, upsetting any gore hunters amongst you, but although pleasantly understated, when it does inevitably fall, it certainly makes a bigger splash than the painfully poetic demise of Yuko’s daughter.
Without showing anything overtly, Confessions projects an atmosphere of palpable evil and menace with minimal locations and fuss. Fine-tuned characterizations help a plot structure that could become confusing if not dealt with so brilliantly, but this sophisticated shocker is slightly let down only by the plot’s thinness. It's not a massive problem. In the end, it allows Nakashima to intersect the action with some wonderful sequences (helped along by cracking melodies from Radiohead, The XX and Japanese superstars Boris), each subtle moment adding depth to plot, characters and back stories with superb realism, never allowing the viewer's mind to wander.
This, of course, is also a horror, so add to all this gripping drama the countless memorable scenes that surprise with their sudden brutality (Shuya cutting himself in class to terrify the haters or the cuteness and foreboding doom of a kitten with its mother), mix in some brilliant performances, especially by the children (it’s easy to see why the whippersnappers are often treated badly in Asian cinema – who in their right mind would want to teach this lot), and it’s obvious the only confession this movie needs to make is that it will blow you away.
Certain to be remade by a Hollywood studio, bursting with inventive visuals and a slew of nasty surprises, Confessions is a beautiful piece of work harmonized with a cracking soundtrack, brilliant screenplay and wonderful performances. Put simply, the best film of 2011. DW
Film: K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask
Release date: 10th January 2011
Certificate: 12
Running time: 137 mins
Director: Shimako Sato
Starring: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Takako Matsu, Tôru Nakamura, Kanata Hongô, Yuki Imai
Genre: Action/Adventure/Crime/Drama
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Japan
Japanese cinema is known for producing many things from classic monster movies (Godzilla; 1954) to even more classic samurai epics – Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), Throne Of Blood (1957) and Yojimbo (1961), to name just three – and most recently, supernatural J-Horror such as The Ring (1998), The Grudge (2002) and Dark Water (2002). However, Shimako Sato’s latest feature (her first in over ten years) is none of these, and offers a very different vantage on an increasingly popular national cinema.
In an alternate 1940s, where the Second World War never happened, the fictional Japanese capital of Teito revels in a prolonged aristocracy that sees the rich owning the majority of the wealth and the poor living in shantytowns on the fringes of the city. However, there is a proverbial thorn in the side of their tranquility; a mysterious masked villain known as K-20 – the phantom thief with twenty faces – wrecks havoc all over the city, stealing priceless objects from the elite.
Meanwhile, a talented circus acrobat Endo Heikichi (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is hired for a bogus job that results in him being framed and arrested as K-20. With the help of some professional thieves – among them is Genji (Jun Kunimura) – Endo escapes custody and tries to convince the city’s celebrity police inspector (Toru Nakamura) of his innocence by using his acrobatic skill to challenge and apprehend the real K-20…
K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask arrives as a rather unorthodox breath of fresh air from an industry whose current fad seems to be churning out a high volume of low-budget, splatter-infused exploitation flicks. The film is a lighthearted swashbuckler-cum-superhero fantasy reminiscent of old, adventure-filled matinees of yesteryear, assisted with some 21st century filmmaking knowhow.
Performances are good all round, if perhaps a little straightforward and without much subtlety; this isn’t much of problem considering the lighthearted subject matter. Kaneshiro makes for a great lead whilst the older and wiser Kunimura serves well as mentor – it’s an engaging double act. Nakamura positively enjoys every second of screen time as the hotshot inspector, whilst the rest of the cast also appears to have a lot of fun, promoting a vibrant and uncharacteristic optimistic chemistry. As a result, Teito is quite possibly one of the happiest dystopias ever committed to film; even the orphaned children living in alleyways and boxes seem strangely content with their squalor.
This overall sense of colour and cheer is supported wonderfully by slick and professional cinematography that exudes the kind of old-school glamour that’s akin to a golden-age Hollywood picture. The film’s production design follows a similar modus operandi; reveling in modernist, art-deco architecture that lends the film a certain magical quality. It’s not perfect. There are a couple of moments where the film loses its period essence; the scenes that see Endo carry out his training by free running across the roofs of Teito’s skyline don’t exactly feel like that they’re taking part in late-1940s Japan for, example.
However, this is an alternate timeline, as indicated by the opening narration in an almost trailer-like manner (the modern day infomercial?) as well as the steampunk-esque flying machines that breeze past in the film’s first extreme wide shot. The inclusion of a Tesla inspired contraction – the MacGuffin that K-20 wishes to steal – that can inevitably be programmed for evil not only suggests that we are firmly in fantasy/comic book territory but raises the stakes to tantalizingly old-fashioned world-domination levels for the hero to overcome.
Part of K-20’s overall enjoyment lies in its rather deft ability to riff off many varying genre conventions and iconographies. Part super-hero movie, part steampunk fantasy, part detective movie, part heist movie, part period adventure, part romance, part comedy – the list goes on. The K-20 thief is a compound caricature made from elements of Spider-Man, Robin Hood, The Shadow and Zorro. Naturally, this does mean that the film is not particularly original, a mere recycled mishmash of various genre elements. However, its combination of said elements and its execution keeps things fairly unique and fresh, if only from a visual standpoint.
The set pieces themselves are very entertaining and make one pine for the days when these kinds of action scenes were the norm instead of computer-generated monstrosities duking it out for as long as the budget can last. Do you remember a time when computers and wires were only used to enhance a fight scene? K-20 remembers, and it makes for a refreshing change of pace. Implausibility is challenged but stays within the limits of the film’s logic. Endo and K-20’s showdowns are most enjoyable, partly through using the real actors for those scenes but also due to Sato’s decisions with regards to camera placement. Movements and stunts are given room to breath, and never come across as jumbled orgies of random angles, as is the case with a lot of contemporary action cinema. Other modern action movie gimmicks such as slow motion and fiddly camera-centric moves are used sparingly and effectively.
Another pleasant surprise is that the film’s inclusion of comedic relief, for the most part, works quite nicely and contains plenty of quirky Japanese humour - Akechi’s ridiculously young side-kick fantasizes about the Tesla device’s destructive power as, in his day-dream, it wipes out the city in a huge mushroom cloud. It then cuts back to the adolescent as he stares vacantly and longingly into the middle distance. Some of the heist elements of the film are also quite subversive; one sequence sees an entire section of a bridge get stolen by Genji’s group of thieves, seriously.
But the most amazing thing on display here is not the film’s ability to fathom a good balance between sincerity and tongue-in-cheek silliness – a sub-plot featuring Yoko, a politically ignorant heiress and love-interest, wanting to help feed the poverty stricken orphans is about as serious as it gets – but its overall execution. For a film that runs at a seemingly bloated two hours and twenty minutes, the pacing is incredibly brisk with very few dull moments. Also, for a film that was made for less than the average catering budget for a medium size Hollywood production, production values are extraordinarily high and offer plenty of bang for buck.
K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask is ultimately a disposable, yet highly enjoyable romp: think Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) made as a costumed action-adventure serial. Deep down, there’s nothing particularly new here but the film works on sheer bravado, nostalgia and entertainment value alone. Worth a look. MP
Check out the trailer below for K20: The Legend Of The Black Mask, which comes to DVD on 10th January 2011.
More information on the film can be found by searching this website.
Adapted by writer-director Shimako Sato (Tale Of A Vampire) from a novel by So Kitamura, the film stars Takeshi Kaneshiro (Red Cliff; The Warlords; House Of Flying Daggers), Takako Matsu (Confessions) and Toru Nakamura (Tokyo Raiders; Gen-X Cops) in a thrilling tale of an unlikely ‘superhero’ who is forced to pit his wits against the titular villain who has his sights set on world domination.
The year is 1949 in a slightly alternative reality to the one we know. In this version of history, World War II never happened, Teito is the Imperial Capital of Japan, inventor Nikola Tesla has just won a Nobel Prize, and Japanese society is divided between the extremely rich and the hopelessly poor.
Taking advantage of the situation is a mysterious thief and master of disguise known as K-20 – the Fiend with 20 Faces, a self-styled Robin Hood figure who steals from the rich and gives only to himself.
Having set his sights on a newly developed energy beam generator that could make him the ruler of the world, K-20 sets about achieving his deadly goal by framing a poor circus performer, Hekichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro), for his previous crimes using the rehearsal of the high society marriage between heiress Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and Chief of Police, Kogoro Akechi (Toru Nakamura) as a backdrop.
Endo is arrested at the scene of the rehearsal and sentenced to death but manages to escape. On the run, Endo realizes the only way to prove his innocence and clear his name is to assume the identity of K-20 and take on the villain at his own game by finding and obtaining the energy generator first.
A cool, light-hearted caper packed with exceptional stunt work, thrilling set pieces and impressive action sequences (including some amazing free running), K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask is a thoroughly enjoyable and uniquely Japanese take on the superhero movie.
Film: K-20: The Legend Of The Black Mask
Release date: 10th January 2011
Certificate: 12
Running time: 137 mins
Director: Shimako Sato
Starring: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Takako Matsu, Tôru Nakamura, Kanata Hongô, Yuki Imai
Genre: Action/Adventure/Crime/Drama
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Japan
