Kao

A woman has two daughters who couldn't be more different - Yukari is slim, attractive and popular whilst Masako is frumpy, clumsy and reclusive. When their mother dies the two sisters fight, and Masako kills her sibling. She goes 'on the run'... which is quite a challenge for somebody who has barely left home her whole life, and has rarely had to deal with other people.

Junji Sukamoto's film is an offbeat exploration of a type of person who doesn't often get attention, cinematic or otherwise. Something like a road movie which leads to fascinating and unpredictable places, it is a quite unique and powerful piece of work. It's sometimes very funny, sometimes very sweet, sometimes rather rough and sometimes quite disturbing. Fantastic acting by the lead actress Naomi Fujiyama carries it wherever director Junji Sakamoto decides it should go.

Well, as the (only!) other reviewer sort of implied, the story here is very straightforward. But it's the characterisation that is the problem. The "heroine" (using that word in the loosest possible context) is a problem.

Is she meant to be a "funny nerd", a la Jim Carey or perhaps Rick Moranis, at whom we laugh hilariously when she falls over her own feet? If so, then the movie fails, because she's not funny in that way - it would be like laughing at a paraplegic who fell out of a wheelchair.

Is she meant to be "seriously" clumsy, and so worthy of our sympathy? If so, then the movie fails also, because the clumsiness is so contrived, so exaggerated, the things that happen to her are so improbable, that the plot simply loses all credibility. It's like a "bad" war movie where the bad guys fire machine guns at John Wayne and every bullet misses, but he closes his eyes and with 6 shots of his revolver kills 20 baddies. And the scene where she "meets" her dead sister in the bathroom - well, that was totally incomprehensible.

Maybe this a "race" issue, with me not being Japanese therefore not being able to understand a Japanese "character" movie. I dunno. But by the end of the movie, I found myself regretting that I had allowed two hours of my life to slip away in front of the tube.

Misako, the fleeing main character who inadvertently kills her own sister directly after their overworked mother drops dead, struck me as mentally challenged right from the start. She is not "right." Even her walk is unstable. Psychologists would have a field day with her lack of self-esteem and poor self-image. She seems to have been the family dummy from the word Go. Yet, she is toiling dutifully away as the movie opens, sewing endless seams on zoo-ey fabric covered with jungle animals among whom she picnics in her imagination. Misako's demeanor is roughshod and instinctual, and her outcries are in such a low register, from the diaphragm, that it spelled mental illness to this viewer at least. Why, on two occasions, when unwelcome men press sexual demands upon her, does Misako encourage them once they wain by saying "My body is on fire!"? I had a difficult time following the various supporting characters,especially the men. Who was whom? From whence did they come?They confused me completely. If you enjoy watching a hard-pressed Japanese woman, who strangled her sister, running for her life through various gritty areas of Japan, colliding on her wobbly bicycle with strangers, remaining mute in circumstances that seem to require speech, pratfalling flat-out upon the ground several times in awkward flailings about, doing swimming motions on dry land like a maniac - then by all means rent this confusing flick. The only good thing is the realism imparted by the evidently well-respected Japanese actress Naomi Fujiyama.

I'll do a longer comment later, if I can see it again, but this is a must see, a one-woman and much more credible "Honeymoon Killers," a more insightful "Fat Girl." For 123 minutes, you'll be controlled absolutely by stage actress Naomi Fujiyama in, according to imdb, her only screen role. This is no staged play. Her transition to the screen flawless.

'Face' is a fascinating and difficult to categorize movie. Naomi Fujiyama gives an impressive performance (her movie debut) as the frumpy, clumsy and socially retarded Masako who one day strangles the pretty sister who loves to torment her. Masako flees from her home and then goes on a journey, both physically and emotionally, which ranges from everything from rape, earthquakes, learning to ride a bicycle, and working in a karaoke bar. All kinds of things both big and small, serious and trivial. What makes the movie consistently fascinating is the fresh approach of the unpredictable script and direction by Junji Sakamoto, a film maker I am not familiar with. 'Face' isn't really either a true life crime portrait of a murderer or a saccharine women-overcomes-the-odds-and-finally-learns-how-to-live movie that Hollywood churns out. It's somewhere in between. And how much if any sympathy or empathy you feel for Masako will depend on the individual viewer. It isn't an obvious movie, and that's what I enjoyed about it. It may not be everybody's cup of tea but I liked it a lot.