Screwed (Neji-Shiki)"Cult Movie." It's a phrase that gets bandied about to describe a film that's precious to few, but outside the mainstream. Neji-Shiki (released in the US as Screwed), features a favorite actor of mine, Tadanobu Asano, as the hapless Tsube, cartoonist and cuckold. After he and his pretty wife, Kuniko (Miki Fujitani), are kicked out of their apartment because he can't pay the rent with his art, she goes to work for a dorm as a live-in cook, and he goes off to find shelter with a colleague, an effete letterer with a propensity for midnight molestations. Tsube's life begins to spiral down from here, into depression and melancholy, even madness.
|
|
I think I picked up Screwed from some store while I was on a kick for Japanese movies; after seeing Asano in several other films like Ichi the Killer, I was drawn to seeing his performance in this. What I was unprepared for was the startlingly strange tale that sprawled before me. The film's opening is jarring to say the least, a psychedelic visual effluvia of sexual writhing and mud, with wicked contortions and spasmodic organisms, sounds of pigs squealing and unearthly howls--and this is just the inner imagination of Tsube, struggling to compose a comic book...rather fruitlessly. The film is filtered through a sickly tinge, making the whole of the movie feel as though the viewer were stricken with some kind of ailment, gradually progressing into a full-blown epidemic of hallucinations and hysteria in the end. After Tsube reunites with his wife, his suspicions that she has been unfaithful flourish when he discovers condoms in her purse, but has no sexual interest in him. Then she invites her old beau--a total jerk, in all honesty--to sleep next to them after he bought them pork cutlets--which Tsube is not too proud to eat. When she does reveal that she thinks she's pregnant, prompting Tsube to vomit out of despair, she tells him it was some guy from the bookstore she used to work at, and she lost count of how many times they did it in the one night. As though to twist the knife, she claims she fell asleep during the act. Tsube is so wracked with grief, he goes home alone and downs a bottle of sleeping pills, a lone shiba-inu sadly following him to his bed. But Tsube's suffering--or his transfiguration, at least--isn't over. Tsube goes off into the mountains to drink and...well, who knows what else, but he meets a rustic hostess of a small bar named Chiyoji (Tsugumi). Chiyoji kind of mirrors Tsube's own shortcomings: easily manipulated, low self-esteem, and feeling trapped. Maybe the difference is that for this brief interlude, Tsube is able to overcome his weakness by observing hers. Whatever the case may be, Tsube's odyssey continues.
Screwed is one of those movies that feels like a great flick to throw on with a big burrito and a beer and kick back and soak in the strangeness. The bizarre lighting and set design is an appropriate compliment to the story that practically unravels for the final act into a delirious, warped mess, like a poison running through your veins. Tsube's journey brings him to some red light district, where he continues to feed his destitute ways by conversing with a virgin prostitute, who points out locations on her naked body like it was a street map, and advises against taking sleeping pills as they contribute to weight gain. But Tsube feels unfulfilled using with his unorthodox brand of therapy, runs for the ocean (literally) to go dig clams. He stays at a truck stop with an elderly woman and her daughter, a lovely woman who Tsube discerns is a nymphomaniac, and Tsube is not to proud to prostrate himself (again, literally) before her, and give in to his carnal desires. For a while, he believes he's found the love of his life, but that would be too easy for Tsube...he needs to suffer more it seems. He comes back a year later to find she has forgotten him completely, so he goes to the beach to play with a stray cat and eat clams. Unfortunately, he gets stung by a jellyfish, and a vein in his arm gets ripped open. Maybe it's some kind of horrible toxin that infects him, maybe his sanity has finally cracked under the weight of his increasing sense of estrangement, but from here Tsube's journey no longer subscribes to the tenets of reality. In the end, Screwed is willing to let go of the constraints of rational thought, and let us be swept away on a tide of madness, carried off into a realm where reality has lost its flavor, and the insane is the only route left to walk. I've always been a fan of Screwed since that odd day where I stumbled across it who-knows-where and took it home, watched it, and was left with a sense of delicious befuddlement. Let the walls of rational thought tumble down, and welcome in the void.
Recommended for: Fans of bizarre and darkly comic Japanese cult films, a really odd duck with a plot that never really goes where you think it might. For fans of highly experimental film, and that's a good thing.
Screwed is one of those movies that feels like a great flick to throw on with a big burrito and a beer and kick back and soak in the strangeness. The bizarre lighting and set design is an appropriate compliment to the story that practically unravels for the final act into a delirious, warped mess, like a poison running through your veins. Tsube's journey brings him to some red light district, where he continues to feed his destitute ways by conversing with a virgin prostitute, who points out locations on her naked body like it was a street map, and advises against taking sleeping pills as they contribute to weight gain. But Tsube feels unfulfilled using with his unorthodox brand of therapy, runs for the ocean (literally) to go dig clams. He stays at a truck stop with an elderly woman and her daughter, a lovely woman who Tsube discerns is a nymphomaniac, and Tsube is not to proud to prostrate himself (again, literally) before her, and give in to his carnal desires. For a while, he believes he's found the love of his life, but that would be too easy for Tsube...he needs to suffer more it seems. He comes back a year later to find she has forgotten him completely, so he goes to the beach to play with a stray cat and eat clams. Unfortunately, he gets stung by a jellyfish, and a vein in his arm gets ripped open. Maybe it's some kind of horrible toxin that infects him, maybe his sanity has finally cracked under the weight of his increasing sense of estrangement, but from here Tsube's journey no longer subscribes to the tenets of reality. In the end, Screwed is willing to let go of the constraints of rational thought, and let us be swept away on a tide of madness, carried off into a realm where reality has lost its flavor, and the insane is the only route left to walk. I've always been a fan of Screwed since that odd day where I stumbled across it who-knows-where and took it home, watched it, and was left with a sense of delicious befuddlement. Let the walls of rational thought tumble down, and welcome in the void.
Recommended for: Fans of bizarre and darkly comic Japanese cult films, a really odd duck with a plot that never really goes where you think it might. For fans of highly experimental film, and that's a good thing.