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Japon

2002, Movie, NR, 122 mins

Japon: Review

JAPON
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Life, death, resurrection, sex: This strange and beautifully expressive film set in a remote Mexican canyon has nothing whatsoever to do with Japan, but its themes are as universal as they come. An unnamed man (Alejandro Ferretis) leaves Mexico City for a forgotten hamlet at the bottom of a faraway canyon; when a traveler he meets along the way asks why anyone would ever want to go there, the man tells him point blank: He plans on killing himself. To a city dweller unaccustomed to the ways of the country, the town is as good a place as any to end one's life. From the screams of the slaughtered pigs to the hanging carcasses and piles of entrails at the butcher shop, it seems as if death has taken up residence in the town. Looking for a place to stay, the man is introduced to Ascen (Magdalena Flores), and old, arthritic widow named after Christ's ascension into Heaven. Ascen offers him the use of the barn that's attached to her tiny hut high on the canyon's rim; there's no running water, but it's perfect for the man's purposes. But as life in the village goes on around him, the man slowly realizes that the winding road that leads into the depths of the canyon isn't the end of the line, but a path back to the land of the living. Ascen turns out to be a woman of surprising fortitude and wisdom who, once she discovers the revolver tucked away among the man's belongings, is quietly determined to help him stay alive, even if it means submitting to his bizarre request for sexual intercourse. Owing a great debt to Andrei Tarkovsky and his protege, Alexandre Sukarov, Reygadas film employs long takes and an evocative soundtrack, and opts for slow pans and widescreen composition over more conventional shot/countershot editing. Reygadas's use of Cinemascope captures the otherworldly landscape in all its austere glory, and like the films of his Russian forebears, the effect can be hypnotic. And yet for all its formidable art-house trappings and religious symbolism, the film's real antecedent appears to be Hal Ashby's 1971 cult favorite HAROLD AND MAUDE, in which a morbid, death obsessed younger man finds new meaning in life through a intergenerational sexual relationship with a much older, life-loving woman. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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