plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Am I watching a different film?????????? I'm halfway past the 1 hour mark and I erm......this takes forever. Should I still go on??????????
Important Ryuichi Hiroki - Japan's Hidden Gem
- Thread starter sitenoise
- Start date
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Should I try M as I believe your not-so-good on him is my good on him......... or Vibrator?
We're usually on opposite ends.
We're usually on opposite ends.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
No you shouldn't go on. I don't think you'll like this guy if you don't like this one. He makes films about people, not twisty plots or action.
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Thanks. Yeah, I came into the realization where if this movie is representative of most of his works, I think he's not for me.
I do appreciate films about people. I liked the pancreas movie and I sensed that vibe in this. But he just takes too long shots, too little dialogue, trivial things such as eating or fixing the bed (it really reminds me of your type of films), I'm not made for that.
I'll try to see if M appeals to me. That would be the do-or-die film. If I don't like it, I'm done here.
I do appreciate films about people. I liked the pancreas movie and I sensed that vibe in this. But he just takes too long shots, too little dialogue, trivial things such as eating or fixing the bed (it really reminds me of your type of films), I'm not made for that.
I'll try to see if M appeals to me. That would be the do-or-die film. If I don't like it, I'm done here.
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Ahem..........M isn't on my convenience store. 
Shameless request alert.
Shameless request alert.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
If this film was four hours long, which it could easily have been, it would be Hiroki's Love Exposure. In many ways Hiroki is a perfect flip-side analog to Sion Sono. Hiroki is a craftsman and a gentle soul; Sono is a batshit crazy guerrilla poet. They are both kind of pervy; they can both whip out a film in the time it takes most film makers to come up with the idea for one. Most of all they both have some special sauce that allows them to communicate with actors and get them into a space where they will deliver depth--so we can witness what's inside them.
The genius that is Ryuichi Hiroki
Kabukichô Love Hotel breaks two fundamental rules of scripting a film:
An Example of #1:
The film takes place over the course of 24 hours, give or take, which includes one night at this Love Motel. One of the main characters is the manager at said motel. During this one night his character lives through his little sister showing up there to shoot a porn movie AND his girlfriend who shows up to sleep with a record label executive in order to get a contract. Neither of the girls know he works there (he's not proud of it and has kept it secret), and he is not aware that either of the girls would indulge in such activities. I mean, GIMME a BREAK. Just those two plot points alone, even if it didn't strain credulity that they would happen the same night, would be enough for an entire film to sort out. Here they are just a couple things that happen on the way to the incredulous other plot points the fully fleshed out other dozen or so characters go through during the course of this one night.
An Example of #2:
Well ... the whole film is #2. Each of the dozen or more characters introduce themselves with something along the lines of: "Hi, I'm John who was born in a ghetto and walked nineteen miles to school without shoes because my abusive alcoholic father ran away with all the money my mother had saved up for an operation to save her life before my house burned down and I was abducted by aliens". I mean, GIMME a BREAK. Almost every character in the film delivers a background monologue which is supposed to explain how they ended up in this sleazy love motel. It's like a competition for who's experienced the most sorrow. I rolled my eyes at the beginning of every one of them and found myself experiencing real empathy toward the character by the time they finished.
How does Hiroki get away with taking a dump on these two very fundamental rules of script writing?
One of the reasons is, he doesn't give a shit. He's not trying to fool anyone, trying to be clever by half. It's a fucking movie. If you want a story, go read a book. But this is where he is clever. Good characters are a story by default. Bad writers get in the way of that by trying to force the clever story that's in their head onto the character, with brute force if needed, so maybe we marvel at the story not caring who it's about. For Hiroki the story isn't what the character travels through in space and time. The story is the character, some nebulous eruption of real humanity. Inside them. Revealed, not manufactured.
Good actors are required for this kind of work. Hiroki knows how to pick them, and he knows how to get out of their way and how to get the most out of them. He's made some mistakes, and he's made some terrible movies.
This very Japanese film, Kabukichô Love Hotel, belongs to the brilliant, fluent in Japanese, Korean actress Lee Eun-woo. It belongs to her because she owns it, she pwns it, not because it's about her. She has more charisma than 90% of the Koreans who call themselves actresses put together.
Oops. That's a shot of her in Moebius. A film where she cuts off her son's penis and eats it to spite her cheating husband.
The husband then has his own dick surgically transplanted onto his son, and then she has sex with her son because, after all, it's her husband's dick. But I digress ...
Lee Eun-woo can eat-act well. No small feat. She will go boldly where no one has gone before--which makes her dangerous. And gives her power. She's smoking hot in spite of her unattractive and tragically out of place fake tits. Why!? Why! Why!? Most actors let us inside, show us their soul, through their eyes. Look at those eyes. She doesn't need them. In Kabukichô Love Hotel she lets us inside while wearing a blindfold. That she is also naked in a bathtub, with fake tits on full display, is zero distraction.
All the characters in Kabukichô Love Hotel are great. I call. No use going on and on about them. Lets just skip to the ending.
The motel manager and his girlfriend bookend the film. That's them on the poster. Their story ends sadly, except if you aren't paying attention after the credits start rolling you'll miss a shout out to loveliness for one of them. Eun-woo's character may have the most screen time. Her story ends deliciously ambiguous: could be her worst nightmare, or a sappy happy ending--because she's brilliant and scary enough you can't tell. Her departure from our lives takes place as the credit roll begins. There are a couple other quick wrap-ups of character during the credit roll and then when it's done the one truly straight up happy ending takes place--for my second favorite character in the film, the motel cleaning lady. Hiroki goes from sad through ambiguous to happy with the endings. Story matters.
The genius that is Ryuichi Hiroki
Kabukichô Love Hotel breaks two fundamental rules of scripting a film:
- Don't over-plot your story to the point you have to introduce eye-rolling coincidences in order to get through it in some "normal" amount of run time.
- Don't make your actors spew expository dialog to provide background to a character if it's way out of bounds from the way someone would normally talk.
An Example of #1:
The film takes place over the course of 24 hours, give or take, which includes one night at this Love Motel. One of the main characters is the manager at said motel. During this one night his character lives through his little sister showing up there to shoot a porn movie AND his girlfriend who shows up to sleep with a record label executive in order to get a contract. Neither of the girls know he works there (he's not proud of it and has kept it secret), and he is not aware that either of the girls would indulge in such activities. I mean, GIMME a BREAK. Just those two plot points alone, even if it didn't strain credulity that they would happen the same night, would be enough for an entire film to sort out. Here they are just a couple things that happen on the way to the incredulous other plot points the fully fleshed out other dozen or so characters go through during the course of this one night.
An Example of #2:
Well ... the whole film is #2. Each of the dozen or more characters introduce themselves with something along the lines of: "Hi, I'm John who was born in a ghetto and walked nineteen miles to school without shoes because my abusive alcoholic father ran away with all the money my mother had saved up for an operation to save her life before my house burned down and I was abducted by aliens". I mean, GIMME a BREAK. Almost every character in the film delivers a background monologue which is supposed to explain how they ended up in this sleazy love motel. It's like a competition for who's experienced the most sorrow. I rolled my eyes at the beginning of every one of them and found myself experiencing real empathy toward the character by the time they finished.
How does Hiroki get away with taking a dump on these two very fundamental rules of script writing?
One of the reasons is, he doesn't give a shit. He's not trying to fool anyone, trying to be clever by half. It's a fucking movie. If you want a story, go read a book. But this is where he is clever. Good characters are a story by default. Bad writers get in the way of that by trying to force the clever story that's in their head onto the character, with brute force if needed, so maybe we marvel at the story not caring who it's about. For Hiroki the story isn't what the character travels through in space and time. The story is the character, some nebulous eruption of real humanity. Inside them. Revealed, not manufactured.
Good actors are required for this kind of work. Hiroki knows how to pick them, and he knows how to get out of their way and how to get the most out of them. He's made some mistakes, and he's made some terrible movies.
This very Japanese film, Kabukichô Love Hotel, belongs to the brilliant, fluent in Japanese, Korean actress Lee Eun-woo. It belongs to her because she owns it, she pwns it, not because it's about her. She has more charisma than 90% of the Koreans who call themselves actresses put together.
Oops. That's a shot of her in Moebius. A film where she cuts off her son's penis and eats it to spite her cheating husband.
The husband then has his own dick surgically transplanted onto his son, and then she has sex with her son because, after all, it's her husband's dick. But I digress ...
Lee Eun-woo can eat-act well. No small feat. She will go boldly where no one has gone before--which makes her dangerous. And gives her power. She's smoking hot in spite of her unattractive and tragically out of place fake tits. Why!? Why! Why!? Most actors let us inside, show us their soul, through their eyes. Look at those eyes. She doesn't need them. In Kabukichô Love Hotel she lets us inside while wearing a blindfold. That she is also naked in a bathtub, with fake tits on full display, is zero distraction.
All the characters in Kabukichô Love Hotel are great. I call. No use going on and on about them. Lets just skip to the ending.
The motel manager and his girlfriend bookend the film. That's them on the poster. Their story ends sadly, except if you aren't paying attention after the credits start rolling you'll miss a shout out to loveliness for one of them. Eun-woo's character may have the most screen time. Her story ends deliciously ambiguous: could be her worst nightmare, or a sappy happy ending--because she's brilliant and scary enough you can't tell. Her departure from our lives takes place as the credit roll begins. There are a couple other quick wrap-ups of character during the credit roll and then when it's done the one truly straight up happy ending takes place--for my second favorite character in the film, the motel cleaning lady. Hiroki goes from sad through ambiguous to happy with the endings. Story matters.
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
I'm afraid I enjoyed your review more than I enjoyed the first half of the movie. I just can't comprehend on how the characters really attracted you. I can't see their story. I can't see their life. I really just can't. And I don't mind wanting to understand it all. Its the beauty of democracy. Very well-written review by the way @sitenoise . Such good insight.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
I'm not sure if I have it any more, as it was not one I was that fond of. It's more like I disagreed with it than didn't like it. But it's more of the same. People suffering and etc. Kabukicho has more action than most of his films. I'll look for M. In the meantime see if Strobe Edge is at the store. Just take a look at it. That's his best Pancreas movie, I think. It's ALL pure positive sincere love and goodness, mostly.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
Kabukichô Love Hotel is built on two of the stupidest things a film director can do. It's easy to see how that might not work for everyone
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Don't bother when its too time-consuming. I only suspected I might like M since you didn't like it and we're on opposite universe in our taste in films....
Thanks anyway in case you try to find it.
Yes, its there. I'll give it a try. Wish me luck.
divemaster13
Member: Rank 4
I'll probably never sit down to watch these movies, but it is fun and interesting reading your opinions of them.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
Yeah, Hiroki is probably not your cup 'o tea. It's fun and interesting for me to try and write about him. I've wanted to for a long time. Almost all his films are about women. I think most people who know his stuff agree that he knows how to create a space that will showcase them. He certainly knows how to photograph them. He's worked with many of the best actresses in Japan--some to greater effect than others ...
Shinobu Terajima
[URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/kaho-minami-2/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/fumi-nikaido/']Fumi Nikaido[/URL][/URL]
[URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/kaho-minami-2/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/fumi-nikaido/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/aoi-miyazaki/']Aoi Miyazaki[/URL][/URL][/URL]
[URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/kaho-minami-2/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/fumi-nikaido/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/aoi-miyazaki/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/sakura-ando/']Sakura Ando[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]
[URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/kaho-minami-2/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/fumi-nikaido/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/aoi-miyazaki/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/sakura-ando/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/yu-aoi/']Yu Aoi[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL]
... to name a few. And he gets great performances out of young actresses who don't even know how to act yet. He often trains the camera on them for an uninterrupted ten or fifteen minute take and says "show us what you got"[URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/kaho-minami-2/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/fumi-nikaido/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/aoi-miyazaki/'][URL='https://letterboxd.com/actor/sakura-ando/'].[/URL][/URL][/URL][/URL] I think a lot of these young actresses are surprised at how well it turns out. So he's doing a service to the film industry. lol
I'm not sure I'll re-watch all I've seen--there are many I still haven't seen--and sadly I didn't keep notes on a lot of them. But I think I'll try and blurb my way through them, just for the historical record. I can't stress enough how much I love the fact that he doesn't aim very high, never sets out to make a masterpiece, never makes a film about rich and powerful men and their rich and powerful man problems.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
Well, that's not entirely true, but for the most part ....
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
I Am an S+M Writer (Futei no kisetsu) [2000] • Japan
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Hiroki released this film and Tokyo Trash Baby on the same weekend!
Kurosaki (Ren Osugi) is an erotic novelist who uses his editor and a hired model to act out scenarios in his living room he will use for inspiration in his writing. His wife Shizuko (Yôko Hoshi) calls him a pervert but we soon learn that what bothers her is that she feels her husband has intellectualized his carnal desires to the point that she's physically neglected. Shizuko tries to make him jealous, or simply goes after what she desires with someone else. At first she brings home a Caucasian English teacher but soon zeros in on her husband's editor after witnessing his accomplished S&M rope tying technique. Kurosaki's first response is anger, then forgiveness, then he decides to use the affair as inspiration for his current work in progress. He demands that his editor continue the affair and recount all the sordid details to him. He slaps his editor upside the head and then forgives him and offers him a drink each time before they get to work.
I don't think this would be funny if it were an English language film. Part of its charm is feeling like a foreigner watching a Japanese film. Much of the humor is surely lost in translation but some of the translations take on a humor of their own. Often it feels like the words are too blunt and some subtlety of language is being missed, while other times it seems words are forced together into strange combinations to try and convey different shades of something not literally translatable. "Go anal". It's all played very sincerely, if somewhat surreal.
Speaking of surreal, one thing that puzzled me throughout this film was the house where most of the action takes place. The layout seems inscrutable, a labyrinth of hallways and doors. A character will walk down a hall, turn down another, and then open a sliding door to apparently go into a room. Then the camera is in the supposedly entered room but the door has hinges and no relation to a hallway. Kurosaki will serve his assistant a beer from one direction and then deliver a second one from a different location. There's one scene that appears to have no plot value where the maid exits a door, removes her shoes and plunges off the porch a couple feet to the ground, as if she expected a step of some kind to be present. I assume this scene is meant to convey that even the characters are a bit befuddled by the structure and layout of the house. Maybe I just missed something but this kind of scene does fit in with the overall strangeness of the film.
While this comes off as a small and amusing film, I think it was a big film for Hiroki, somewhat autobiographical, incorporating way more Japanese history and culture than I am privy to, and most importantly served as a great transition for him from a director of pinku films to more mainstream fare, albeit a little art-house-y.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
M [2006] • Japan
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
A whole lot of twisted psycho-sexual drama going on here. A young woman has this made up story in her head about when she was a kid and her neighbor's father shagged her mom, inducing her to start dating the boy next door as an excuse to get close to the father, but when the boy finds out the truth of her motivation he kills his mom and dad--and she feels complicit. To atone for this Freudian guilt over something that didn't happen she takes on a Yakuza pimp, in that fucked up way that people do, to mistreat and abuse her, in that fucked up way that people do. We are given the possibility that all of these things are just fantasies of the young woman's impotent but well-meaning husband, but so what? What if? Doesn't change much of the experience for the viewer.
Meanwhile, a young man who really did kill his own father, and participated in a gang rape of his mother, wants to save the young woman from the Yakuza pimp so a bunch of drama takes place amongst the three of them. The whole thing comes off less like an exploration of psycho-sexual weirdness or repressed and imagined memories, and more like a director's fantasy of seeing how far he can go in abusing a young actress. Kinda creepy, imo.
Single-name actress Miwon, undoubtedly a pseudonym, is quite fetching as the protagonist, exuding a screen presence that's both strong and vulnerable. This is her only screen credit so I wonder if she has acted, or is acting, under a different name, or if the experience of making this film put a great big damper on any hopes she had of making it a career. Miwon is also known as Yuko Takashima and Yuko Ashizawa.
Director Ryuichi Hiroki's extensive filmography is all over the place. From soft-core pink films to highly regarded film festival winners like Vibrator and It's Only Talk to innocent young love stories like April Bride and the Love on Sunday films. He's pretty good at what he does but I think he goes a little too far here in heaping on the abuse without enough consideration of real reasons for why it's happening.
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
Haha! Mr. M who loves watching paint dry----movie version.
I'm still on the process of finishing Strobe Edge and its a cute pancreas movie. I guess my type is really the pure love pancreas movies.
We should contribute to IMDb and add two genres: sitenoise movies and pancreas movies.
I'm still on the process of finishing Strobe Edge and its a cute pancreas movie. I guess my type is really the pure love pancreas movies.
We should contribute to IMDb and add two genres: sitenoise movies and pancreas movies.
sitenoise
Member: Rank 5
If you are watching Strobe Edge, see if you notice a couple things that Hiroki does (if you care): One, he really knows how to soft focus and photograph women, he lights them really well, often with a window behind them to make them glow, and uses a lot of amber colors for warmth--so it's a pancreas movie with good photography (imo); two ... he often shoots two people talking from about a half a block away but you can hear them talk like you are right next to them. That's kind of a weird thing he is known for.
plsletitrain
Member: Rank 5
*ponders and tries to look back on the scenes I've seen* I'm still on the 34 minutes mark (when I watch movies I do some stuff in between-I watch dragon ball episodes, read the news, reply to the forums, watch Strobe Edge, do my work, etc. lol) but I'll try to watch out for the points you mentioned
Do you have an emoticon that has the I-really-can't-comprehend/ I-really-can't see-that/ You-have-weird-set-of-eyes look?
You can throw me anything and everything, I'll watch it. I'm just ashamed of having to ask favors from you but if you're very very bored, please send me M and Vibrator.