Émotion

Fine avant garde film. Call me crazy, but I feel as if Guy Maddin used Emotion as an inspiration for his film, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002).

The plot makes no sense. I frankly don't think it's capable of being "spoiled" in any legitimate sense. This short movie is more about the visuals than any coherent narrative. Unfortunately, the visuals largely fall into the category of doing odd things with the camera, just because they can.

If you're thinking of watching this because it was included on your Criterion Collection version of House, I would recommend you skip this and move on to another movie from your set instead. It doesn't matter what you pick; almost any one of them would be a better use of your time.

'Emotion' is peculiar little film. Experimental, but it has warmth and some sweetness in it. Like many other such surreal experimental movies, 'Emotion' is very hard to analyze. The film has a core story - a girl meets another girl who looks like her and she falls in love to a vampire. Very interesting use of old Dracula myth. Although it might be little hard to follow or understand what is going on - is it a dream, a distorted real world - it's still enjoyable film, especially when you're into surreal stuff. Partly black/white, partly color, stop-motion effects. Cowboys having shoot-outs, vampire throwing knife into the air and laying down to wait his death by falling knife. Girl from sea discovering city and love, and then returning to the sea. Unlike most surrealist work 'Emotion' never falls into dark territory, it keeps it cheerful almost child like joy. Many state that Bunuel or Lynch would be perfect start in surrealist films, but I think Nobuhiko Obayashi's shorts, although hard to find, are also great start.

Here we have a classic example of charming avant garde madness from none other than Japan, a country that's the home of many extremely unique and flat out bizarre films, and this is no doubt near the top of the most unique and bizarre films I have yet to see. It isn't perfect, and by the end it has descended into such chaotic experimentation that it just becomes a collage of near nonsense, but it is lots of fun and remains consistently off-the-walls and entertainingly playful as to keep itself far from being a waste of time in the least. It's funny, scary, and, of course, highly surreal, really worth seeking out for anyone who considers themselves a big fan of "weird movies."

Although I'm making the film kinda sound like nothing much more than amusing madness, there is plenty of artistic merit at play here. The cinematography is oddly eye popping, the visuals invigorating and simultaneously beautiful and disturbing at times, it's a dreamlike quest of love, taking the atmospheres of a fairy tale, horror film, and abstract work of modern art and smashing them together in a vampire-based short film fantasy that could only come from a wildly creative mind made of pure imagination. And it turns out that mind is the same mind behind the film 'Hausu', which has been on my watchlist for years and I feel I am now ready to finally get to watching...tomorrow...