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Film: The Man Who Loved Yngve
Release date: 20th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Stian Kristiansen
Starring: Rolf Kristian Larsen, Arthur Berning, Ida Elise Broch, Ole Christoffer Ertvaag, Jorgen Langhelle
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: TLA
Format: DVD
Country: Norway
A high school coming of age tale is a well trodden genre, but a coming of age story coming out of Norway could pretty much be anything, having heard stories of school classes climbing trees in forests, and being forced to drink copious amounts of beer before they’re allowed down during their graduation period.
The Man Who Loved Yngve is not that film, rather it introduces us to Jarle (Rolf Kristian Larsen), a young man with a love of music, Katrine and very little else in his sparse, cold corner of Norway.
Jump forward six months from skipping a school history trip and he has everything a young male could possibly want. Cool friends, a beautiful girlfriend, and he is the frontman in the Mathias Rust Band - but all this is fleeting as Jarle’s about to be introduced to the new boy in school, and the surprising object of his affections, Yngve…
This is a film that is surprisingly void of cliché. Set in 1989, during the height of the aids epidemic, there is always the danger of falling back and relaxing on stereotypes to tell the story. Such is the strength of Stian Kristiansen’s vision and the intelligence of Tore Renberg’s screenplay (which he adapted from his own novel) that this film is never likely to fall into that trap. The love triangle between Jarle, Katrine and Yngve is never overly forced into unnatural narrative scenarios but is allowed to flow organically between the classroom and the tennis court.
Larsen is excellent as Jarle, both as the care free boy who’s got the girl at the beginning of the film and gradually through to confused but curious admirer of Yngve to openly, at least to himself, infatuated teen. His ability to be openly smitten with the new boy yet wearing his mask of ‘normality’ with friends and girlfriend alike is a skill not yet mastered by actors twice his age. Ida Elise Broch (Katrine) is under utilised but represents the ‘gold standard’ of the dreams of every teenage boy in her role as beautiful and sexually active girlfriend/band manager. Yngve (Ole Christoffer Ertvag) has quite a similar job to that of Ida Broch in that he’s given little more to do but be a teenage honey trap for Jarle, but yet it works as this is his tale, his decisions and, ultimately, his life that he is in the process of defining. Arthur Berning, as best friend Helge, gives a strong supporting performance as the alpha male of the group, and most likely the most difficult person Jarle will have to come out to should he decide his future lays with Yngve.
The score is a dream, a strong collection of credible tracks from the ‘80s and contemporary works that sit beautifully together, and most importantly have a strong sense of the character and the influences that a young aspiring musician in Norway during the Cold War decade would have.
The film is not without a sense of humour, something that can be missing in films grounded in such serious issues as sexually and relationships, but fortunately the director has remembered that boys (regardless of sexual orientation) will be boys. Helge’s utter distain at his best friend taking up tennis is something that will make you laugh before you can fully take in just how dark that statement is, given the time period. Likewise, the scene where the best friends venture out to purchase weed from a drug dealer who has managed to break both arms and is in desperate need of someone to help him tidy up after a bowel movement is distinctly Norwegian humour.
The cinematography does an excellent job of depicting where Jarle’s attentions are directed, and his desires swinging without being overly showy or self aware, which is good, as the rest of the film is so silently mature that flashy or overly stylistic cinematography would simply detract.
The film’s real strength is shown in the last twenty minutes. This is not a criticism of the first hour and ten minutes but as the film progresses, and Jarle’s choice become more and more limited, The Man Who Loved Yngve naturally ascends to several significant scenes. The exchange of those three little words at a busy house party between the two boys, Katrine’s tearful exchange in the aftermath of the party (also the strongest drama scene Ida is given) and the showdown between best friends are fitting pay offs for the slow burning dilemmas that have been building up through the course of the film.
Previous experiences of Norwegian cinema could leave you with a misguided view that it was all machismo and death metal documentaries, but that’s clearly not the case. The Man Who Loved Yngve may not be the most original piece of cinema to come out of a nation that is crammed with creative vision, but it is a tender, confident and genuinely moving cinematic achievement. More than anything else, more than a tale of sexuality, friendship, loss, dreams and fears it is a tale of basic human needs. A story simply about love and the mental journey some have to undergo in order to accept it. DL
Film: Boxes
Release date: 1st November 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 95 mins
Director: Jane Birkin
Starring: Geraldine Chaplin, Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, Natacha Régnier, Lou Doillon
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Studio: Bluebell
Format: DVD
Country: France
When Jane Birkin turned her hand to direction, lovers of Anglo/Franco cinema were to be treated with a strong female voice whose experiences of working with such great directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Richard Lester and Alain Resnais would certainly give a rise to a new chapter in an eclectic career.
Boxes, Birkin’s debut with a narrative driven feature, tells the story of Anna (played by Birkin herself), a lady in her fifties, who, while unpacking in her new seaside residence in picturesque Brittany, is visited by moments and people from her past.
Whether it is her three ex-husbands, her three children, or her deceased father, Anna is forced to deal with the emotion scars, tragedies and triumphs of her life in a physically sparse yet psychologically dense environment…
For Birkin and Birkinites alike, a film about memory and the overlapping presence of past and present is not a new subject matter. Fans of the made for TV French title Oh Pardon! You Were Sleeping… will be familiar with the notion of individuals dealing with memory and tragedy in a heavily theatrical environment. Birkin’s performance is, like her direction, understated, though she is never better or more complicated a character than when she is interacting with her daughters.
Adele Exarchopoulos as Lilli gives an incredibly mature performance for one so young. At times a playful child, on other occasions carrying the wisdom of her older self that Anna is clearly projecting on to the child from her foreknowledge – it allows for a fascinating back and forth between mother and daughter on several occasions.
The complicated and sexual relationship between Max (Maurice Benicho) and his daughter Camille (Lou Doillon) gives the film, which could easily drift off into the realm of art house pulp, a degree of gravitas that is deeply needed, and is carried across by both actors so skilfully that it manages to leave the audience pondering the unasked questions as to the level of intimacy between father and child.
The casting of Anna’s husbands from various stages in her life is wonderfully eclectic, with Benicho, John Hurt and Tcheky Karyo all pitching in with excellent yet short performances, but also highlighting what is surely a diverse and complicated woman (in Anna).
Cinematically, there are some issues with the film. At points, the lack of camera movement only serves to highlight the fact that this is all staged, which perhaps was Birkin’s intention, but in cinema it creates issues between film and audience. At other times, most notably when Anna’s parents are talking in the garden, the cinematography has adopted an extremely low angle, creating an almost expressionistically Weimar shot, though without the psychological devices to drive the idea home. This is momentary, though, and before long the cinematography is back to being made up of master and two shots, which, along with the almost nonexistent score, does little to alter the idea that perhaps Boxes would translate better on a Parisian stage than a cinema screen. The deep focus master shot of Karyo, Hurt and Birkin is something that should be savoured by cinema audiences, as all three actors have such rich oeuvres, yet it is almost too understated and stagey. Several scenes through the film scream Beckett, Endgame especially, which is an example of the director’s theatrical background but highlights this is neither Beckett nor up to the standard of Beckett.
The most interesting avenue in Boxes is one that is key to the film, yet almost disregarded. Notions of memory and its reliability are littered throughout cinema, so it was probably preferable not to linger on it for too long, however, the fact that Hurt’s character goes without a name, and is initially referred to as a ‘Dick’ and is forced to break through Anna’s subconscious to make her to acknowledge that it was her who oversimplified their relationship in order to justify walking away with their child, is extremely interesting. Ideas of suppression would certainly allow you to wonder if perhaps Anna knew, at least on one level, about the unsavoury relationship between her ex-husband and her daughter, or that her grandmother, a constant source of entertainment in the film, is so deep in the final stages of dementia because that’s how Anna has chosen to remember her - all notions that Antonioni would have been highly interested in.
Ultimately Boxes is a stage play that has been recorded for the cinema audience, and though, at times, it is extremely thought provoking and rich, with excellent actors and narrative, it ultimately has a level of theatrically that sits uncomfortable with the cinematic audience. A theatrically that has long since been left behind for the advancement of cinema as its own autonomous art form. There are many moments in the film that should provoke excitement, warmth and rage, but the misfiring format of the film ultimately leaves the narrative key points falling flat. DL
Horror is old hat. It has been many years since Hollywood cinema explored the boundaries of the genre, preferring to rely on the tried and tested ‘teen slasher’, riddled heavily with the mundane. Moments of silence followed by a sudden burst of sound for a cheap shock, even the ever original Asian frontier, famed for its originality and disregard for convention, has become stagnant leaving a genre in desperate need of a saviour.
The 36-year-old Dutch director of children’s comedy Honeyz, Tom Six, wouldn’t be the first name on the list to grasp the torch and lead the way back to the glory days of horror cinema, but a passing comment to friends has led Six to create horror cinema’s last and greatest taboo, only for him to completely decimate it.
The Human Centipede [First Sequence] tells the story of a German doctor with a single goal, a horrifying dream, to create a human centipede out of compatible individuals. Severing muscles, removing teeth, surgically grafting one to another and another. Like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds before it, the question of why is never really addressed. It’s a redundant question anyway, why typically detracts from how, and how is the most terrifying and sickening idea to hit the horror world in years...
The film was born out of a joke you had running with friends about the punishment for paedophiles. What was the thought process around the film when you finally decided to actually make it? Was there much of the script in mind or did it evolve around the surgery?
I wanted to make my first international film, a horror or a thriller, and when I made the joke to friends everyone was disgusted by the idea. but it stuck in my head and I began to think who would do this? I would need to be a doctor, a surgeon, so I thought what kind of surgeon would do that? I got to thinking about the Nazi doctor’s during the Second World War and their experiments and decided at that point that the doctor needed to be German.
I was a fan of ‘80s American horror films, and decided to make it almost like a cliché, with American girls getting into trouble. I also love Japanese horror films - they’re very inventive, so I wanted a Japanese character.
So the choice of German, American and Japanese actors was part of the design as you wanted the film to echo back to the German experimentations during World War II?
It became, yeah. I knew it needed to be a German doctor, and with the American girls and the Japanese character I had the main participants of the Second World War. I also knew that I wanted to have the Japanese character at the head of the centipede so he’d be unable to communicate with Dieter.
Historically horror has always been grounded in the tragedy of the human condition and the evil that mankind does to itself. The Weimar cinema movement in Germany owed its very existence to the collapse of the German economy after the First World War, and the shattered psychological state of German men as a generation of males returned home physically and mentally scarred, and their wives running the nation. Critics of The Human Centipede would have you believe that it’s nothing more than a chauvinist exercise in the vile and tasteless, but that’s simply not the case. The film resonates against the imposed echoes of the Second World War, challenging audience’s nerve and expectations when confronted with a sequence of events that can only ever end badly.
How do you go about getting a film like The Human Centipede [First Sequence] made?
We had the same group of investors for my three films, and to get them onboard we tricked them a bit. When we came to them about the film, we told them it was a film about a surgeon who stitched people together, but, at that time, we didn’t mention anything about the mouth to anus, but when they saw it they liked it.
When we casting in New York, I brought a diagram in to explain to the actors what I meant, a lot of them got angry and left, but the smart ones stayed.
Dieter Laser did a wonderful job. Was he your initial choice for the doctor? Did you have an idea on who you wanted for the cast?
When I was writing the script, I saw Dieter in a DVD and loved his face, I watched a lot of his work, and he’s been in a lot with people like John Malkovich and Burt Lancaster, but had never been in a horror but his face was perfect, evil. So, I flew to Berlin to meet him, and I can’t actually describe his reaction when I told him about the film (laughs), but he got it and agreed to make it. We became very close on set.
Laser performances seemed painfully honest on screen. How much did he actually bring to the set that was his own ground work?
Yeah, Dieter is a great actor - really involved and methodical in his approach. He brought in all of his own clothes for the character, all his suits, the doctor jacket was a Nazi doctor jacket, nazi boots…it was really fun. Almost like playing.
The Human Centipede feels like a return to old-fashioned horror (with the presence of a crazed doctor and young women stranded with a broken down car), was this a deliberate move back to the narrative traditions of horror?
That’s my style. I am a fan of David Cronenberg and his earlier work - his horror films - and they way the play out. Horror films at present are too fastly edited. You miss so much because it’s just continually chopping, and you see little emotions in the film, so what I wanted was a slower editing, more attention to the drama - to create a warm atmosphere, really locking in the drama and the claustrophobia.
The film’s received some seriously harsh criticism from many mainstream publications, but hasn’t seemed to damage the anticipation of the film. Is this something that upsets you or do you embrace it?
Yes, I knew the film would create a real divide - a love or hate reaction. Lots of critics hate it, but I don’t care about the bad reviews, there’s always something about it film they have trouble with. They have an inability to cope with some of it, and I take it as a compliment.
A lot of the negative reviews get very personal...
Yeah, it’s just a film. I don’t understand it…it’s not real.
You’ve cited the early work of David Cronenberg as a form of inspiration. Was there one particular film in mind during production?
Not particularly one. I love his way of making film, especially the older films - his horrors. The way he edits, the way he creates tension. Lars von Trier is also someone whose style I love. I think my style is like that also.
This is as far away from HoneyZ and Gay as you can get. Is this the evolution of your cinematic oeuvre, or will we see you return to those genres in future projects?
(Laughs) Yeah, it is. I always wanted to make horror films, and in Holland the climate is not that receptive. Most of Holland’s horror films flop immediately, so it was always somewhere I wanted to go.
One of my best friends is gay, and he started telling me about the international gay scene, and I thought “that’s controversial, perhaps I could make a movie about that,” then I wanted to make a children’s film and then a black comedy, which is more my sense of humour. I think I have a dark sense of humour and, at that point, I decided I wanted to make an international horror film
How is [Full Sequence] coming along?
Good. We start shooting in August in London. The cast is almost entirely British; it’s a twelve person centipede.
I had lots of ideas for the first film, but I felt I had to hold back, as I figured I needed to introduce the audience to the idea, so I couldn’t do everything I wanted to in [First Sequence], and that’s all going into the second one. This film is going to be everything.
Now that the world knows what to expect, was there any trouble financing or similar outrage with casting the sequel?
All sorted! We start in two weeks. It was a very different experience, people knew what the film was about and everyone wanted to be involved. People want to put money into it; actors really want to be a part of it…
It’s way more disgusting (laughs), and so much more offensive, but they really want to be a part of it. When it’s finished it will make the first one look like My Little Pony (laughs).
Oddly, The Human Centipede is not without its humour. Although it’s never played for laughs, the film carries the director’s dark sense of humour from conception to the page to the screen, and because of this makes it easier to watch and even enjoy than other films of a similar vein. It is Six’s sense of humour that makes you cheer for Laser, even though you know you really shouldn’t, uniting the audience in a state somewhere between the horrific and absurd.
Horror has a new voice, a darkly comedic and mischievous teller of shocking tales that are traditional yet ground breaking all with a genuine sense of humour. The Human Centipede has divided opinion in every cinema screen in every city it has played, but one fact is beyond argument, what Tom Six has in store for his cinematic audience will be unlike anything that horror has seen before. The envelope will be pushed, the taboo broken. DL
Film: The Human Centipede [First Sequence]
Release date: 20th August 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Tom Six
Starring: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura, Andreas Leupold
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Studio: Bounty
Format: Cinema
Country: Netherlands
Few would have thought that a joke between Tom Six and friends would ultimately result in the film that has provoked worldwide debate over its release and certification.
Much to their frustration, Jenny (Yennie) and Lindsay’s (Williams) car breaks down en route to a nightclub while on vacation in Germany. Stranded on a dirt road with zero phone signal and little sign of help arriving, the two Americans venture out on foot to find help.
Saved by the presence of a house in the middle of nowhere, the women they are relieved and thankful when Dr. Heiter (Laser) offers to call for roadside assistance. Unbeknown to them, their fortunes are in flux and, with the arrival of a third person, ultimately doomed to becoming part of a psychic surgical experiment to create a human centipede…
The first thing noticeable is the story, or occasionally lack there of. Narratively, the film is a lot like the slasher works of the 1980s, with young women isolated in the middle of nowhere. Unlike those films, Six preferred to disregard the idea of building the tension gradually to the point of frenzy, like Jaws, and opted to allow the storyline to serve the visual display that he is about to dish up - and it works. Much has been made of the surgery in this film, and whether it attracts you or repulses you – ultimately, if you’re watching the movie, you’re watching it for the purpose of seeing what it’s all about. Giving that, as a rationale, they have managed to create a positive out of a negative - a complex narrative that builds slowly towards the creation of a human centipede would no doubt leave the audience frustrated and resentful.
Laser (as Dr. Heiter) is a tall intimidating figure who carries himself as if he is sculpted from true evil. His disregard for human life is wonderfully balanced with an unspoken past he dangles in front of the camera in the moments of solitude. The explanation scene, so outlandish that it could just as easy raise a wave of laughter as a chilling silence is pitch perfect, always menacing and clinical without appearing hammed up - a veritable Brian Cox as Lector rather than Hopkins. The weak line performance wise are the Ashleys (Williams amd Yennie), though mainly Williams, as their delivery is always heavy, their dialogue (which is suspect at times to begin with) lands flat, and their gestures and mannerisms are a painful reminder that the content of the film most likely scared off actresses of a higher calibre. Thankfully, and this is in no way meant to be misogynistic, once they’re stitched together, this is no longer an issue, and the film can genuinely stand a chance of improving.
The actual surgery is handled with a real balance and maturity. A lot of the media hype related to this film would paint a picture of it being nothing more than graphic ‘shock cinema’, in the style of the video nasties that were rife a generation ago. In fact, the only signs post-operation of their joining are some fresh scars along the cheek. That’s not to say that there aren’t some truly difficult scenes to sit through. The removal of sections 2 and 3’s teeth will always get a wince from those who have ever been to a dentist. The movement of the centipede when Heiter is training them can also be difficult at times to watch, but only during the close ups.
The cinematography adds to the atmosphere of the film in every aspect. Though not always as flashy as it promised, a delightful light flare during an early scene promised a visually stunning film. These moments of great style are infrequent, with Six preferring to allow the cinematography, like the narrative, to play servant to the horrific set pieces that the film is punctuated with. The look of the film, alongside the lead’s performance, is played straight and is clinical. All precautions are taken to prevent the film from lapsing into a hammed up gore flick of little merit or mood.
Though the film has its faults, mostly in the unimaginative set up for the main body of the narrative, it also has a lot going for it. The Human Centipede is actually quite an old fashioned horror film that has sutured together the key elements in any film of its genre, and then pushes it out a little further than most are comfortably used to. DL
Series: Disgaea Collection
Release date: 7th June 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 300 mins
Director: Kiyotaka Isako
Starring: Kaori Mizuhashi, Tomoe Hanba, Yuko Sasamoto, Chihiro Suzuki, Chiwa Saito
Genre: Anime
Studio: MVM
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Based on the RPG videogame of the same name, the twelve-episode anime version of Disgaea attempts to capture the hearts, minds and free time of its gaming fans in a Pokemon meets Hayao Miyazaki quest in the Netherworld.
Trainee angel Flonne (Sasamoto) has been on a continuous two year quest in the Netherworld to locate and kill King Kirchevskoy, only to discover his castle in ruins, the king already dead and his son Laharl trapped in a coffin.
Upon freeing the heir to the throne, they venture out on a journey for Laharl (Mizuhashi) to take his rightful place as king, having to fend off pretenders to the title along the way - including Vyers - while trying to avoid the ‘Defender of the Earth’, Captain Gordon…
Western audiences are ultimately spoilt with anime, as the majority of the titles that reach Europe are strong, coming out of the wonderful Studio Ghibli from its creation twenty-four years previously. The gaming market, until recently, has been a little less selective, and it is this gap between the two mediums where a lot of titles find their way beyond the highly saturated shores of Japan.
The animation in Disgaea is simplistic, like Ghibli’s Spirited Away, but with little touches for the expectant gaming audience who wish to see their favourite game as an anime title. There are some beautiful psychedelic moments that are reminiscent of the artwork of Francesco Poroli. The glimpses inside the head of Etna during the episode Welcome To The Netherworld Hall Of Treasures is both cute and funny. The Mr. Americana persona of Captain Gordon is extremely stereotypical without being rude, as he most likely represents the Japanese super-ideal of what the masculine American alpha male is all about.
Overall, though, the animation falls short, as sometimes the background work or characters leaping into shot look rushed, if not a little crude. The character of Dr. Jennifer is another good example of how the animation sits uneasily amidst itself. Laharl, Flonne, Etna (to an extent) and the Prinnies are clearly modelled on, firstly, the game and, secondly, on the targeted age group, i.e those kids that have gotten a little old for Pokemon and Dragonball Z but a little young for the animated version of Dante’s Inferno. Jennifer, on the other hand, is a highly sexualized animation of the typical blonde Caucasian girl you see in some of the less reputable anime circulating. Like Jessica Rabbit dressed for spring break, her heaving bosoms are enough to make Laharl feel nauseous and send any parent watching with their children racing for the door before a conversation about the birds and the bees appears on the horizon.
Saying that, some of the imagination behind the animation is truly wonderful, and leaps and bounds ahead of what’s coming out of American animation studios. The Prinnies, peg legged bat winged penguins stitched back together, are truly fantastic. Filled with the souls of the dead, who have committed sinful acts, they are forced to work as servants for money until they have enough to buy their way out of their zombie pingu shells and be reincarnated. It is their interactions with Etna and Laharl that are the most interesting, as they touch on a fair deal for the worker, unionization and slavery, all against the backdrop of a youth orientated anime without getting too preachy. The shopkeeper, with a Halloween carved vegetable for a head, and Zaninsky, a well built ruler with a hog face, also provide creative glimpses of the character grotesque that we’ve come to expect from anime over the years. They also show flashes of a genuine story, as capitalist monsters who crave money and power for nothing more than the collection of said money and power. Unfortunately, these characters, as well as Prinnies, are supporting characters to leads that are on a well trodden path with little extra to contribute to the genre.
The soundtrack is a real joy, however. Whether it be the in-show score that is clever enough to feel like it belonged to a loading screen in the videogame, or the super catchy pop track over the opening and closing credits of each title that you simply can’t help but hum along to.
Similarly, the use of colour is exceptionally strong, with the mansion in A Dungeon Of Temptation…Maybe using a healthy potion of rich purples and blues to create a cold semi-menacing feel upon arrival at a Bram Stoker residence.
The best and yet worst thing about Disgaea is the dialogue, ranging from the sublimely mundane to the hilariously funny, when confronted with the knowledge that Captain Gordon has arrived to collect a bounty on his head, Laharl petulantly remarks “tell him to come back later I’m eating,” and it’s an odd mash-up that always seems to be at war with itself.
Fans of the videogame will find elements in the show to savour, as it does manage to capture the mood of the game, however, the rest of the viewing world will be left feeling more like a Prinnie servant than a contributor to the quest. DL
Film: Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl
Release date: 15th March 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 85 mins
Director: Yoshihiro Nishimura & Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Starring: Yukie Kawamura, Takumi Saito, Eri Otoguro, Jiji Bu
Genre: Horror/Action/Comedy
Studio: 4Digital Media
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
The emergence of a new Yoshihiro Nishimura film is a giddy moment for fans of Asian cinema. The 2008 title Tokyo Gore Police was a gore fest with a satirical tongue in its cheek, and a message referring to the potential dangers that exist within the capitalist world. With that in mind the emergence of Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl from the directors editing suite was anticipated as a chance to enjoy a fantasy world with ultra cartoon violence and at the same time ponder some of the deeper questions that have been on the mind of the gore lover.
Monami (Kawamura) is a newly arrived exchange student to the school with a stained past and a thirst for more than simply starting a new life. Having caught the eye of Jyugon (Saito) in one of their many crazed classes together, the couple feel the flicker of new love sparking their teenage desires. The problem comes from the character Keiko (Otoguro), who, along with her gang, has pressured the love-struck Jyugon to be her boyfriend. It is the subsequent battle over Jyugon’s affections which triggers the crimson war that is Vampire Girl (Monami) Vs Frankenstein Girl (Keiko)…
With a title like the one this film carries you would be foolish to expect anything of serious content or merit. Like Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl its goal is to be easily accessible and entertaining, with a fantastical story that has little actual narrative, but is high on visual excitement. If you’re lucky, there’s a subtle core message that is there to be taken, or not, depending on your preference. But with Vampire Girl Vs Frankenstein Girl what is delivered is a completely different monster.
The film instead contains some of the sociological in-jokes that lived within The Gore Police, such as the wrist cutting competitions, but instead foolishly embraces these passing statements, and attempts to drag the laugh out over the film’s running time. In one scene, a young pretender to the wrist cutting throne loses their hand from constant hacking. It’s neither funny nor horrifying; rather the cherry-soda looking blood, which gushes with a ferocity and capacity hitherto unknown in medical science, distracts the viewer from any dramatic effect.
Most of the actors perform admirably in their characters, without having to truly test themselves thanks to the poor dialogue and soap opera style direction they were receiving. The character of Ganguro girl (a Japanese girl who had surgery to become African) was painfully unfunny, and, more so, unwelcome - instead of a socio-political message this was straightforward racism. It echoed an era of cinema that the world is supposed to have moved on from, and was the one genuinely uncomfortable element of the film amidst all the wrist cutting, blood spilling and throat biting.
Narratively, the film was a void, and with such a rich background to tap from in the vampire and Frankenstein mythologies, it’s simply unforgivable that they went out of their way to disregard conventions that a cinema audience has accepted as laws of their creatures. It is also highly frustrating to watch when there’s no sign of any attempt to even create a subversive mythology. The filmic narrative seemed to have been quickly ditched in favour of an MTV music video style of direction, allowing the director to have ample amounts of pointless, distracting bloodshed repeatedly, with very little reference to its purpose.
82 minutes is not a long time. But continuous drawn-out blood spilling pieces in succession, with no overarching direction, made it feel like an eternity. No cohesion, and the lack of a focused direction was so painfully obvious at times that it seemed like Nishimura and Naoyuki Tomomatsu (co-director and writer) had divided the film equally in order to play a cinematic game of one-upmanship, all to the detriment of their ever increasingly frustrated audience.
The one saving grace, rather fittingly for a feature length music video, was the soundtrack. Heavy amounts of Japanese jingle friendly pop and cyber punk that in any other film would be a negative (due to its clunky overwhelming placement) came as a welcome distraction from the filmic mishmash occurring on screen.
Asian cinema is an extremely rich market that is constantly reinventing itself and pushing conventions for the sake of a better end product, but this film drags the genre back ten years. DL
