Naked of Defences

Mubobi

(Japan, 2007, 88 mins)

DV Cam

North American Premiere

PROD: Toya Toko
SCR/ED: Ichii Masahide
CAM: Seki Masafume
MUS: Asama Yuki
Cast: Moriya Ayako, Konno Sanae, Nishimoto Ryuki, Nakamura Kuniaki, Kakinuma Naoko

Those who remember Ichii Masahide’s Dog Days Dream from our program two years ago may be quite surprised by Naked of Defences. Like Woody Allen, Ichii is a comic with a yearning to be serious, and this remarkable movie suggests that he’s more than capable of bringing it off. Ritsuko makes plastic toys on a production line in a countryside factory. She makes herself as much as possible like a machine, suppressing emotions, working alone and formalizing all contacts with those around her. She extends this treatment to her husband too, and we learn that she’s been this way ever since she suffered a miscarriage in a road accident. But Ritsuko’s over-ordered life threatens to fall apart when she’s told to supervise a new worker on the factory floor. Chinatsu is the virtual opposite of Ritsuko: loose, careless, frivolous--and very visibly pregnant. Against all odds, the two women have a heart-to-heart and Ritsuko pours out her fears and resentments. It gets her thinking that she’d like to try for another baby herself, but her husband isn’t interested... and Ritsuko comes to feel despair.

Ichii tells the story of this damaged woman’s road to a kind of recovery with precision and restraint. His own notes lay his thinking bare: “I made careful efforts to prevent such inexcusable feelings as ‘wanting to be liked’ or ‘being seen in a positive light’ or ‘trying to make a display of eccentricity’ from bleeding into this work.” His refusal to play to the gallery pays off in a movie which is intense all the way from its quasi-documentary opening to its quasi-melodramatic climax.

-- Tony Rayns

---

---

For ticketing information please phone 1-604-685-8297 or email boxoffice@viff.org