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| 2005 NYFF Films Introduction Good Night, and Good Luck Regular Lovers The Death of Mr. Lazarescu Methadonia L'Enfant (The Child) Bubble The Squid and the Whale I Am Capote Something Like Happiness Sympathy for Lady Vengeance Manderlay Tale of Cinema Breakfast on Pluto Through the Forest The President's Last Bang Who's Camus Anyway? Three Times Paradise Now Tristram Shandy Gabrielle The Sun The Passenger Cache (Hidden) | Who's Camus
Anyway? Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Japan, 2005, 115 min.  The director's ability to handle an elaborate plot and edit the flow of much hustle and bustle donıt quite save this farce about young would-be filmmakers at a Tokyo university from a degree of chaos and pointlessness. A lively group of kids are shooting a movie about a schoolboy who kills an old lady just to see what it would feel like. The young director Matsukawa (Shuji Kashiwabara) is being stalked by his ditsy girlfriend Yukari (Hinano Yoshikawa) while his status gives him ready access to cuter girls. Ikeda (Hideo Nakaizumi), the last-minute replacement for the filmıs starring role of the "Bored Killer", may have sexuality issues. Professor Nakajo (Hirotaro Honda), a former director, is a recent widower mooning over a pretty student, Rei (Meisa Kuroki), and his quiet air of has-been loneliness makes the kids, whose heads are full of (mostly western) film allusions, call him "Venice," alluding to Visconti. Somebody whoıs read Camus compares Ikedaıs role to Meurseault in The Stranger which at first Ikeda confuses with Inspector Clouzot. Yes, you could call this Altmanesque. But you couldnıt call it a great success, perhaps primarily because the young TV actors who form the cast arenıt distinctive enough, even if some of them, like Kashiwabara, are said to be "hot" now. There are some genuinely funny moments, though, and the murder sequence weıre finally allowed to see being shot at the end is pretty hair-raising. Itıs done so you arenıt sure for a minute if itıs real or fake, but thatıs just an obvious gimmick; it doesnıt lead anywhere. In fact, this could have worked better as a TV series, with the hectic sequences structured by station breaks. (Chris Knipp) |
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