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Dolls

2002, Movie, NR, 114 mins

Dolls: Review

Best known for making and starring in yakuza films — defined by their simultaneously fluid and abrupt shifts between vicious violence and austere sentimentality — stand-up comedian-turned-actor-turned-filmmaker "Beat" Takeshi Kitano occasionally throws fans a ringer. This defiantly odd, glacially sad compendium of three overlapping love stories was inspired by the highly stylized conventions of Bunraku theater (in which black-clad puppeteers guide large, expressive dolls through sophisticated stories of love, sacrifice and implacable fate), and by a memory dating back to Kitano's early career as a young club comedian. The haunting image of a pair of street beggars roped together at the waist inspired the film's first story, whose doomed lovers drift through the other two like ghosts. After an excerpt from noted playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon's (1653-1725) Bunraku tragedy "The Courier from Hell," the film segues into the story of ambitious office worker Masumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who succumbs to family pressure and abandons his fiancee, Sawako (Miho Kanno), for an advantageous match with his boss's daughter. On his wedding day, Masumoto learns that the jilted Sawako has attempted suicide and survived with brain damage. Guilt-ridden, he stands up his bride-to-be and abandons everything to care for Sawako. They slide inexorably into homeless destitution, and to keep Sawako from wandering off, Masumoto ties them together with a cord. The bound couple become a familiar sight as they wander together through the streets and parks. Their paths occasionally cross that of aging crime boss Hiro (Tatsuya Mihashi), who's consumed with regret for having abandoned the loyal girlfriend of his youth (Chieko Matsubara). Undone by the loss, she waits for him every Saturday in the park where they used to meet. Destiny appears to offer them a chance to start anew when Hiro sees her there. Her path, in turn, intersects that of Nukui (Tsutomo Takeshige), a reserved young man who adores pre-fab pop starlet Haruna (Kyoko Fukada). After her face is scarred in a car accident, Haruna retreats from public life so fans will never see her damaged face — but the obsessed Nukui finds a grotesque way around her reticence. As stylized as Bunraku puppets and strikingly costumed by designer Yohji Yamamoto, Kitano's characters are cruelly manipulated by fate and stripped of everything but their piercing heartache. Whether this measured exercise in romantic melancholy moves you to tears or bores you to them is probably a matter of personal susceptibility to the sting of bitter regret for love lost. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh