Furîzu mî

At the start of the millennium, exploitation movies were few and far between. Films such as I Spit On Your Grave, The Last House On The Left and The Virgin Spring had left the subgenre with little room to breathe. Unsurprising then, that Takashi Ishii briefly moved away from the exploitation genre that dominated his early works and directed Gonin, making him an international name. His films have always been largely preoccupied with revenge, and Freezer was to be no exception. Whereas Irreversible, released two years later, drew critical acclaim mainly for not glorifying the life that had been destroyed but to mourn it, Freezer was first to shift the focus from gory revenge and concentrate on the victim as she struggled to cope with the memories she thought she had buried deep inside her. Irreversible may be more celebrated, but Freezer also demands your attention. Without ever glorifying the horrific acts that fuel Chirhiro's bloody vengeance, Freezer is, for the most part, well-paced and surprisingly beautiful, with a compelling and intensely dramatic performance from its lead. DW

I watched this movie with no knowledge of what the story was about. The director did a very good job developing suspense right from the start. When I found out about the plight of Chihiro, I automatically felt for her. Because of what happened, its effect is so traumatizing that she's virtually helpless to do anything. When push comes to shove, Chihiro has the "fight or flight" choice and it's interesting to see what choice she makes. I must commend Harumi Inoue who gave a really great performance. She truly displayed fear, confusion, paranoia well and I felt really concerned for her character. Hey, if a movie made me feel that strong, I think it got it successfully got its message across.

"Freeze Me" depicts intense violence and I don't mean like cheesy Hollywood does. It deals with violence against women which sadly is not fictional in society. The story takes a trippy twist towards the end and watch the character progression thoughout the film. I must say that Harumi Inoue is stunningly beautiful and was great to watch. She's definitely got a new fan!

While similar in plot to a revenge movie, this is actually a survival movie. I liked it for its intensity: it doesn't take long to get going, and keeps nonstop tension for the next hour or so. Although it reaches its emotional climax a full half-hour before the end, there's enough tension built up by then to carry it through. It concerns a young lady who's confronted by a gang of men who had raped her five years before. The second meeting is no accident, they've sought after her to victimize her some more. Rape is not a crime of sexual gratification, it's a crime of humiliating domination over another person. That said, Chihiro is just the kind of timid soul who can easily be dominated: she doesn't have the courage to do the sensible thing, instead simply hoping the whole thing will go away. It doesn't, of course, and she's forced into action out of self-preservation. It often reminds me of Miike's earlier film, "Audition". That is said to have a strong message about the treatment of women in Japanese society, and I see this as another side of the same coin: a woman who has had a disabling stigma of shame placed on her, and has to struggle to overcome it. While the ensuing violence is certainly justified, it is not glorified. There is no real victory in this movie. While the things she is subjected to are revolting, the camera is thankfully restrained. Most of the violence against her is offscreen, and even the original attack is shown only in fragments, as a series of flashbacks. There is a lot of nudity here, but I don't see it as exploitational. First of all, it's very much a sex-themed movie, so nudity is pretty much a given. Most of it occurs in the shower: she spends an awful lot of time trying to wash herself clean. The movie does offer plenty of messages, but they're not uplifting or inspiring ones at all: more indictments of double standards in the treatment of women. I thought this was a terrific movie, and one that sticks with you, marred only by some truly awful English-language dubbing (at least, in the version I saw). A movie like this depends on a strong lead actress to carry it, and the voice actress in the U.S. version is just really not any good at all.

The rape-revenge genre is rife with dodgy exploitation pics and under-the-counter sleaze, with I Spit On Your Grave (Day of the Woman) being the most (in)famous and, possibly, the most misogynistic. Artistic merit is not something the rape-revenge film concerns itself with (let's face it, 'Last House on the Left' is a crude, artless fluke), concentrating more on graphic sex / nudity for graphic sex / nudity's sake. Oh, and the rape has to be really horrible to justify the rapists' sticky end (no pun intended).

If you're watching a good example of the genre, you'll be putting yourself in the place of the woman and relating to her, something the horror genre frequently does (it's one of the only genres where men will relate to a woman) and wishing her attackers dead - in any way possible, not necessarily in a sensationalist way.

I think Freeze Me (or Freezer, here in the UK) succeeds in this, as the plight of the female character is always put first. Agreed, there are a lot of gratuitous shots of her naked body, but these act as a reminder to her beauty and frailty. When it comes to the rape, it is often more implied and in no way staged to be titillating, something the more dubious examples try to achieve, rather disturbingly.

Freeze Me, therefore, isn't exactly an enjoyable experience (I'll have to look up the word 'entertainment'), but it is thought-provoking, well-made on a very tight budget, and incredibly disturbing. One of the best examples of this horror sub-genre.

What "I Spit On Your Grave" should've been. Well, OK, the plot advancement might be a tad contrived, and the weird way a rape victim in this film is portrayed, at least, I hope women aren't actually so victimized by shame in Japan as to maintain a stoic silence that is so firmly entrenched the antagonists can actually blackmail the victim vying against her fear that others might know of her "shame" of being deflowered, abused, or molested. Her inaction for a large portion of the film is agonizing, but understandable in consideration of the themes of the film (action vs. victimization, social shame vs. personal safety, social roles and double standards for men vs. for women). It's an educational bit of work, nicely shot, and generally engaging. Loads better than I had expected it to be. On a neat side note, the star of this, Harumi Inoue, was having dinner at a Sushi joint on fourth, bracketed by a pair of very Yakuza boss looking dudes, tans and black turtlenecks and thick ropey gold chains and tiny glinting glasses, real imposing. My pal Shotaro recognized her. Kind of weird to see a woman out calmly eating sushi that I'd just seen scantly clad, drenched in blood with murder on her mind. Guess that's an illustration of filmic reality vs. actual reality for you.