(In Japanese with English subtitles, Uchida Kenji, 2004, 98 min, 35 mm)
Writer/director Kenji Uchida makes his feature debut with this smart, tricky romantic comedy. Reika Kirishima stars as Maki, a forlorn young woman who has just broken up with her fiancé and has no place to live. Sitting alone with her luggage at a restaurant, she’s determined never to trust anyone again. Clearly owing a debt to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Uchida engages in a similar kind of temporal trickery, backtracking to the beginning of his story again and again and gradually revealing the hidden motivations of his characters. Initially appearing as a standard romantic comedy, the tale turns out to be far more complex than it initially seems, involving a con artist, a yakuza boss, and a briefcase not quite full of stolen loot.
Sponsors: The Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES).
Made Possible by the Japan Foundation (NY Office).
DATE: October 29. 2012
LOCATION: Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, Duke
TIME: 7:00-8:30pm
Cine-East Film Screening: Japan Foundation Film Series: "A Stranger of Mine"
Comments are closed.