Visitor Q (2001)

 "What do you think of such wonderful bullying?"

Oh my. I knew this film would be weird, and I knew it would be disturbing. But I didn't expect... this. So many things I can't even directly allude to. Let's just say there's incest, violence, drug abuse, rape, murder, and milk. Lots of milk. In quantities requiring an umbrella...

The film is very interestingly shot, with a hand-held camera, deliberately given a grainy, low budget look. It's a very deadpan dark comedy, amusing us at times while making us uncomfortable about our amusement. It belongs, I suppose, to a genre where a dysfunctional family is visited by a stranger who patiently "fixes" their problems sothat, as the film ends, the family are happy and united in their extremely twisted way.

The father, mother, son and daughter all do morally repugnant things, but it is the neglect of the salaryman father that is clearly the root cause, filming life instead of living it and accepting his responsibilities. His sexual problems are a metaphor for this. He ignores his son's abuse of his wife, and passively films his own son's bullying. Only a renewed bonding with his wife, in the most twisted circumstances possible, leads to the moment of catharsis as the couple briefly pause their dismemberment of a woman's body to chop the bullies to pieces. Ah,it warms your heart, doesn't it?

There's clearly a subtext here, and a view is being expressed about the percieved woes of Japan. Perhaps one theme is about what it means to be a man- to have integrity, to be a decent husband and father. Twisted though the film is, it makes one think. A worthwhile film, then... but watch it at your peril.