decidedlyodd

Marc, his friend Sara Jane and I went to see ‘Nishi Ginza Ekimae’ (English title: ‘Nishi Ginza Station’) last night at the Northwest Film Forum. It’s part of a series entitled “A MAN VANISHES: The Legacy of Shohei Imamura” which is a retrospective of Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura. The film was a bit strange but funny in a kooky Japanese cultural way. The movie is about a man who has repeated day dreams of being on a desert island with another woman. When his wife and kids go on vacation for a couple days away, he considers having an affair but wackiness quickly ensues.

Highlights include a hilariously simple flashback mechanism for the day dreams, an odd theme song by Frank Nagai (for which the movie was a promotion vehicle–it was sung three times in the movie as required by the producers) and rarely seen Japanese blackface.