Saw Visitor Q, another strange film from Takashi Miike. This one follows a small family of father, mother, son and daughter who exist in some kind of cruel, violent reality. The on is being bullied and takes his aggression out on his mother. The daughter is a prostitute. The father is a recently disgraced reporter who was sexually assaulted while reporting on youth culture. For no reason, some man at a train station hits the father over the head with a rock. This rock-wielding stranger comes to stay with the family for a while.
The universe is dismal and hyper-violent, but in a cartoony way, like the Death of Mary Queen of Scots sketch. As the film progresses, things become more dark and more violent. It's fairly upsetting if you start taking it seriously. Lucky for me, I knew what to expect going in and was only smugly self-satisfied when confronted with the sexual violence, and the knee-deep pools of breast milk. Ah Takashi, I would expect nothing less from you!
The film is dream-like. The plot makes little to no sense but the visuals are very striking and I've genuinely not seen another film like this one. The through-line of the film is the family overcoming their struggles and differences and becoming closer together by descending into a sublimely violent state. This is a neat little surprize but feels like the backwards morals of Oscar Wilde's sayings or of the Marquis De Sade's stories. They're basically jokes, relying on shock and expectation-upsetting, but not really bearing up to any scrutiny and certainly not meant to be taken seriously.
This was a fun film. Not for everyone of course, but a nice little joke while it lasts.
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