| Kinky Kids | |
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| Love hurts: This ain't American Graffiti |
Two teenagers in school uniforms on a bicycle, riding through rice fields. The girl is holding on while the boy pedals away and the soundtrack plays happy music. Looks like your average picturesque teenage romance, right? Wrong: one reel later, the boy is sniffing dirty underwear and the girl yells, "Be my dog!"
Welcome to Sasayaki, a quietly beautiful film that teeters carefully on the fine line between heartbreak and black humor. First-time director Akihiko Shiota crafted this movie in bright colors that show off the beauty of rural Japan. Like much of contemporary Japanese literature, the surface of the film hardly betrays the intense emotions below. Everything is pretty and unblemished, so it's quite a surprise when the story slowly slips into darker places where sweat has to be licked and kicks must be endured.
Of all the eye-pleasing sights in this film, Tsugumi is the prettiest. She plays the star of her high school's kendo team, Satsuki. Young Takuya (Kenji Mizuhashi) is in love with her, but only from afar. The attentive viewer will note first signs of disturbance when it becomes clear that Takuya actually likes getting bashed over the head by his love.
Soon enough though, the two are a couple. Their innocence and unabashed happiness are the stuff of memory for anybody over the age of 20 -- this is first love in full bloom, First Love in capital letters, and Shiota does a masterful job of showing us their first shy steps as a couple, and the acting is first-rate. But as sweet these kids seem initially, most of us will try to distance ourselves when we see Takuya bugging Satsuki's bathroom....
Before we quite realize what is going on, these two kids are engaged in a wicked game of domination and subjugation, rejection and attraction. Takuya does indeed become Satsuki's dog, and her initial disgust slowly turns into enjoyment of that disgust. I won't give away where all this leads, but it's not pretty -- unless, of course, you have a taste for this kind of thing yourself.
This story,which initially appeared as a manga (Japanese comic book), is fascinating because it is told with perfect pitch. It would have been easy for this film to fall into sensationalism. Just imagine what Joe Eszterhas would have done with this material. Just as easily could it have been turned into an outright farce -- the Tarantino gimp approach. Instead, we are allowed to laugh at these strange characters and take their odd love affair seriously. The dark humor goes hand in hand with real insights into the characters' psyches, even the nature of love, period. The result is a film that is as touching as it is hilarious, right up to the wonderful finale.
Sasayaki is now playing in New York and San Francisco.
