Visitor Q (2001)

Dir: TAKASHI MIIKE
Country: JAPAN

AKA:
Bijita Q
Love Cinema Volume 6

When prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike was invited to contribute to the Love Cinema series, few could have predicted the outcome would be the highly controversial Visitor Q. Love Cinema was a series of six direct to rental films from independent filmmakers which were all shot on digital video for ultra low budgets. Of the six films, five vanished without trace into the abyss of celluloid history, but the sheer outrageousness of Visitor Q, and the increasing cult reputation of its director, ensured a limited theatrical run beyond the confines of the series for which it was intended. Miike was no stranger to controversy at this point in time. His cinema was marked by excessive violence, bizarre sexual perversity, and a refreshingly rebellious attitude toward past traditions. Miike embodied a punk ethic, and a particular gift for offensive grotesquery, the like of which had rarely been distributed in the west. In many ways Visitor Q is Miike’s ultimate work of transgression. A vile cocktail featuring one abhorrent event after another. The challenge to social taboo is nothing new, even if Miike piles it on with typical exaggerated relish. The problem with Visitor Q however lies in the fact that for much of its brief running time it is uproariously funny.

Audition (1999)

Dir: TAKASHI MIIKE
Country: JAPAN

Prolific filmmaker Takashi Miike made his international breakthrough with this mischievous and beautifully controlled examination of spectatorship, generic expectation, and gender relationships. With its subtle hints that eventually lead to a nightmare world of sadism and torture Miike proves himself to be a filmmaker that audiences cannot trust. The slow burning narrative build up of the first half affords the male characters an opportunity to express their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. For widower Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) his emotional frailties centre on the persistence of his son in finding a replacement for the wife who perished several years before. Aoyama still loves his departed wife, but the idea of a sexual partner, and a housewife to keep everything in order is very attractive. Aoyama’s sexism is outmoded and old fashioned, but he is essentially an harmless individual. He doesn’t possess the same level of vitriol and spite his friends do at the rising number of women in the work place. Despite the dubious morality of holding a fake audition in order to find himself a suitable wife, Aoyama scarcely deserves the shocking punishment he suffers at the end of the film.

Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike

Writer: TOM MES
Publisher: FAB PRESS
Year: 2003

Since the advent of DVD the distribution of Japanese films in the UK market has improved markedly. Whilst distributors like the BFI, Tartan and Eureka continue to do good work in releasing major films by major directors, contemporary Japanese cinema (say from 1995 to the present) still remains an area of potential limbo. The films of Takashi Miike are representative of this. It doesn’t help that Miike is so prolific - regularly seeing four to six films released in a calendar year, and whilst UK audiences can enjoy his major works, a large swathe (most specifically his more recent work) remains unavailable here. It therefore becomes night on impossible to join the dots of meaning between his films and construct any sense of thematic continuity. Progressions of form and style and his attitude to genre are difficult to decipher when one only sees a handful of works, and despite academia’s best efforts, auteur constructions of filmmakers continue unabated.