Japan Japan

A strange and provocative debut feature from a young Israeli. The film is set mostly in Tel Aviv and features Imri, newly arrived in the city, a despondent young man who is obsessed with visiting Japan. His fantasies of Japanese life include some porn imagery and the film weaves in and out of film-making styles. Although we return to the mundane experiences of his life in the city, there are moments from a video artist in New York, encounters with men, his quirky flatmate, a musical number and one never knows what's going to happen next. The dialogue is mainly improvised which accounts for some of the strangeness but it's done with a bold cinematic intelligence and offers both a fascinating perspective on a slacker's life and an oblique political commentary. It finishes by quoting a Cavafy poem including the lines, "As you have ruined your life here... you have destroyed it in the whole world."
Brian Robinson