Naisu no mori: The First Contact

How to describe this film? It's a group of related inter-cut stories by three talented Japanese directors, but that's not really it...It's a surrealist fantasy of a bizarre reality with grotesque body parts, freaky sex and...no, wait, it's a David Cronenberg comedy where a fellow with enormous nipples pulls bloodsucking creatures out of his pants at a high school after school club. One of the most peculiar films I've ever seen, it defies categories. There are two parts, Side A and Side B, with a three minute on-screen intermission. There are wisecracking TV hosts babbling in fractured languages. And there are icky creatures that alternately make you laugh and make you sick. It's definitely not for everyone, but fans of extreme comedy and very alternative cinema will be thrilled and delighted. I thought it was awesome. 8.5/10

i went to see this film without having the slightest clue about it....

and at first i was quite disappointed; some not very inspiring animations...but then,slowly it all grew, to be more and more crazy and unbelievable, and things accelerated a whole lot...

then it appears to be commercials within each other, gags, comedy shows, circus, small short stories and in a way they have nothing to do with each other and yet they make this incredible organic of well-composed-complex movie!

so a mix with low graphics (and high), fake commercials, beautiful scenes of landscapes and things like that...wow! so all in all the the best parts of Japanese experimental films + all the best from the(Japanese) pop culture...blend it, shake it...and voilà!

I was very glad i saw this movie! really!

With a project like this, it is as likely that it is a random goof as something with some structure. It could be both.

As this was sent to me by a fellow viewer, and because I am so inclined, I tend to see structure. And what I see I like — a lot. It is essentially a series of sketches, some broken up and scattered throughout. Others continue from or extend situations and characters we know. Perhaps these sketches need to be described a bit, as they are what most people will see.

They are tiresome in their humor. Unless you are Japanese, the satire will be lost. But they are amazingly clever in terms of the imagery: striking, unexpected and sometimes disturbing. With all the mastery in the images, they are surprisingly uncinematic, as if this was made not by real filmmakers but by TeeVee or music video people. There are little dramas of teen angst and performance played out, as apt as any John Hughes movie. But when it comes to this sort of thing, my benchmark is "Lily Chow Chow."

But it is the structure that matters here. The large arc here is the visit to Earth by an alien, we see at the very beginning. What we see is what he would experience of us if he encountered a Japanese high school. The main characters here are three girlfriends and three brothers. Their baseline skits are set in ordinary reality with exaggerated behavior. Layered on that are diverse performances, many of dance that they do that get as abstract as the rest I will describe. Layered on that are their numerous dreams and illustrated stories. And layered on that is the story of and references to making the movie.

Any of these is likely to be less or more abstract. They are woven together by recurring characters (including strange parasitic creatures that can be played musically). At the higher level of the dreams and outer framing, we have the same actors playing multiple roles. I haven't taken the time to map them out as I think there is no special insight other than the quantum blurring.

This is an adventure in exploring new cinema by structure. It is just an experiment, so we shouldn't expect it to change lives. But I can easily see how someone can refine and master these techniques to do so.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I hear the phrase "weirdest movie I've ever seen" quite allot, and most of the time I take it with a grain of salt. After all what is strange to one, may become dull as dishwater to another. Few times have I understood or cared to understand what I was watching less than during Funky Forest: The First Contact. I looked into this movie after having had my heart warmed by The Taste of Tea, and its blend of the quirky and surreal images with saccharine sentimentality.

Funky Forest has no sentiments, it is a series of free associative episodes, the flow like the sketches in Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different, and only where the Pythons were compiling a best of, FF is creating a TV show from another universe far beyond ours. Some of the episodes are deadpan and some just awkward, a few last only a matter of seconds while others seem like repeat characters you would find on SNL; there are the mole brothers a band of idiotic vaudeville style hosts who hurl insults at each other and are all but incomprehensible. Then there's the equally dull if less annoying "Unpopular With Women Brothers" also known as Guitar Brother, where a man with long hair sings to a fat little white boy of around 10 (referred to as his brother) and asks him what he thinks to which he's usually insulted.

The film does pick up at about the 35 minute mark when we are introduced all too briefly to The Babbling Health Spa Vixens, three women at a health spa discussing topics like UFO's and shy men, giggling, and enjoying a hot tub. The other highlights include two teenage platonic friends fantasizing of each other in elaborate dream sequences that combine some of the strangest electronic sound collage music to ever be emitted from a car covered in seaweed on a beach by alien children with some dance numbers that brought the theatricality of Tsai Ming Liang to mind. The film is divided into an A side and a B side, with a three minute intermission and later a ten second intermission dividing them like a mix tape you might play in your own sea weed car. Side B is much stronger than side A because it introduced "Homeroom"(perhaps my favorite segment), as well as several more involving alien creatures straight off the set from some David Cronenberg wet dream. Alien creatures used as musical props, used as training in some kind of lactating tennis game, or to generate miniature blood sucking men. I could tell you why but as we see in one scene when a young girl meets a man in a furry yellow suit with a long tail protruding from his crotch, it would take 3 hours and 10 minutes to fully explain what was going on, and even then we might still be lost.

Broken into pieces I could see this film scattered across some kind of "Adult Swim" like Japanese late night show, or making the viral rounds as artful YouTube clips. Altogether as one entity it's a chimera of sketches half-clever, half-hilarious, half-repulsive, half-dull, and half-refreshing. I know that's 5 half's but a film like Funky Forrest, can pull a five assed baboon out of a baby carriage and then go out for Ice Cream without a batting a lash, so it just feels right. Frustrating but ultimately worthwhile viewing, might have made it into my immediate favorites if not for the lackluster gags in "The Mole Brothers" and "Guitar Brother's" segments. Intergalactic Girl DJ Group of the Dream-world known as "The Volume" were almost enough to save the poorer parts, as they collectively hold the power over all sounds of living beings, sounds of nature, and sounds of human technology, and use them to lay down what else, but a funky beat in the forest.

Similar to films by Roy Anderson and Luis Bunuel, Funky Forest distinguishes itself from being neither lyrical and poetic as the former nor as absurdist and satirical as the latter, it's a guttural vomiting of images and thoughts surreal in the automatic writing sense of the word that Andre Breton championed to a fault. The fault still remains here, in the fragmented and emotionally vacant episodes (with the exception of the first dance number which is as close to sentiment and logic as the film is willing to flirt with). Directed by Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine, and Shinichiro Miki the film is obviously a labor of love (if not other more mind altering states) by a group whose been friends apparently since college, and they are clearly unconcerned with whether a wider audience will be interested in their in-jokes (as if Mole Brothers has been around for years), perhaps blissfully so.

If you like strange sci-fi body horror as humor, jokes about guys who can't get dates but who can dance like the wind, recurring nightmares about school, violins which sound like didgeridoo's, and all the non sequitters that can be squeezed into 2 and half hours this for you. Basically Funky Forrest is like watching a late night surrealist (completely illogical) Japanese variety made in a future when aliens (Piko-Riko?) live among us as objects and mutations and dream spirits, and I could go on, but it would take me 3 hours

Funky Forest… I have waited 1 night to let this all sink in.

First of all a little back story. One year ago, I went to the New York Asian Film Festival and saw the film, Taste of Tea. This was a delightful family story which I surprising loved, even though I am the kind of guy that will never turn down the cheesy Hollywood summer block buster.

One year latter I have returned to the Film Festival. Although in New York this festival is packed with violent Korean films, Funky Forest remains the festival's logo for its T-Shirts. So the question you should be asking is, what is all the hype about? Strange foreign film at an underground festival that sells out every show it plays. The hype of course revolves around 1 man, Katsuhito Ishii, or perhaps that's one mans unique brain.

Funky Forest as mentioned by the commenter before me is like watching a Cronenberg comedy. Nevertheless it goes farther then that, it is like if Cronenberg, Lynch, and M. Barney, all had their head infused with each other and then Adam Sandler hit them with a silly stick in till the being could not breath.

If anyone is supposed to summarize what the film is about, then all commenter on this site will fail…miserably. One of my friends described it as watching youtube.com shorts for 3 hours. I would agree it's a whole bunch of shorts, like a pulp film in a way. The stories are kind of connected but you are enjoying the show more then trying to figure out where it all hangs in the balance of the film.

I am giving this film a 9/10 because it did get a little long and tedious, but nevertheless the film had so many memorable moments that it is well worth anybodies time.

All that I am left to say is that as I left the theater I had an urge to buy the DVD, or a soundtrack, but instead all that was on the counter for me was a T-Shirt, and so of course, I bought it.

SEE THE FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, Enjoy guitar brothers, mole brothers, little Asian girls, planet pico, dreamscapes, 3 babbling girls, and of course Homeroom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!