NOTE: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE A SPOILER FOR A FILM LIKE THIS. BUT JUST IN CASE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING FACTS SURPRISE ANYONE..
Here's how the film looks in conventional terms: two alternating voice-overs - one in a distinct Japanese accent, the other in a rather weary middle American voice - tell details (more or less important, on the surface at least) of the speakers' lives, over images of them and various malls, motels, other sterile, anonymous environments. One is a young Japanese businesswoman, the other a lost young marginal woman who seems to have run away from home (after ripping off her mother and sister.) What is their connection? Why do they tell us what they do? Is there even meant to be a narrative thread? If you don't even need to know that sort of thing, or enjoy turning a film around and around like an icy aesthetic object trying to figure out exactly what it means, you might find this very exciting. (Did you like Gus Van Sant's "Elephant"? You'll LOVE this.) Me, I kept wondering why I was still there.
Here's how the film looks in conventional terms: two alternating voice-overs - one in a distinct Japanese accent, the other in a rather weary middle American voice - tell details (more or less important, on the surface at least) of the speakers' lives, over images of them and various malls, motels, other sterile, anonymous environments. One is a young Japanese businesswoman, the other a lost young marginal woman who seems to have run away from home (after ripping off her mother and sister.) What is their connection? Why do they tell us what they do? Is there even meant to be a narrative thread? If you don't even need to know that sort of thing, or enjoy turning a film around and around like an icy aesthetic object trying to figure out exactly what it means, you might find this very exciting. (Did you like Gus Van Sant's "Elephant"? You'll LOVE this.) Me, I kept wondering why I was still there.