Film: Vibrator (Japan, 2003)
Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
This is one of the 1st two films I've watched in CineManila already. Final recommendation: I loved it. It is poignant, and again, something that tugged my heart because of subjects that I can relateto. I'm not too fond of watching subtitles, but it grows on you, and you learn to balance reading and watching the expression on the faces of the charcters on screen. The movie is shot on the road formost of the film, and at one point I almost got carsick (for real) but, the shots does serve a cinematic purpose (illustrating timeflies so fast even for connections that have just been made)...
This is mainly a story about a single, 30sumthing woman, a freelancewriter, who hears voices inside her head. As she reads through a fashion magazine (maybe the Japanese Cosmo), she suddenly realizes women has to listen to a lot of crap about their body image, their aged and wrinkled skins, and the dictates to keep themselves sexy and beautiful. Soon, we find out she throws up her food, to feel good about herself, and she drinks alcohol to cure her insomnia. All in all, she feels lost, until she met a truck driver who has a criminal past, wife and kid but in spite of his roughness, he treated her ever so gently, and love (and lust) blossomed in the movie. And so, again, we are told, love is one of our salvations, but this movie also goes beyond that.
The director used flashbacks, title screens (to mirror the lead character's thoughts) - which i think are really funny, like a movie version of a thought balloon, and voice over (she claims to hear voices on her head, after all), and cutting to the present.. As most of the scenes happen inside the truck, you are forced to be intimate with the two characters as they start to unravel the persons that they are to each other, and we can see every wrinkling of their skin as they smile or frown or orgasm. :p One of the scenes I liked was when the two characters were in the tub together, after Rei (the woman) had a nervous breakdown of sorts, and you can see that even with the arms of Takatoshi (the man) around her, her eyes reflect the loneliness of her soul.
This movie is every bit a love story, about finding connections in strange places (or with strange people, for that matter), but it is also a road trip to self-discovery, if not hope, or ultimately, redemption.
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