Dolls
Screening on Film
Directed by Takeshi Kitano .
With Miho Kanno, Hietoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi.
Japan, 2002, 35mm, color, 114 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
With Miho Kanno, Hietoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi.
Japan, 2002, 35mm, color, 114 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Dramatic love takes center stage in these three interwoven stories inspired by Japanese bunraku puppet theater and featuring beautifully stylized, stage-like sets and costumes. A man flees his arranged wedding when he finds out his true love has attempted suicide, binding himself to his incapacitated sweetheart with red satin; an aging gangster discovers the girlfriend he abandoned thirty years ago remains devoted to him; and a pop star who has withdrawn from society after a disfiguring car accident is confronted with one truly fanatic follower. Despite his deliberate foregrounding of theatrical artifice, Kitano creates an absorbing allegory of love and sadness.