R100 by Hitoshi Matsumoto (you may know him as one half of the Downtown duo / star of the Gaki no Tsukai TV shows), the story of a meek salaryman with masochistic fetishes who sign up for a non rescindable, year long contract with an experimental bondage club to have dominatrixes randomly drop in to humiliate him in his everyday life. It only gets stranger from there...
I said earlier that I had worries the film would be a bit of a mess but it turns out I was wrong. I think I was apprehensive because of Big Man Japan, Matsumoto's first effort as a director that was basically a textbook example of one of his TV skits not scaling up at all to sustain a long feature format despite all its endearing aspects. He followed up with Symbol which was much better (a genuinely good and unique movie, in fact) and R100, while maybe not as good, confirmed it was not a fluke. Matsumoto, on top of his trademark weird humour, exhibits some real focus in aesthetics, pacing and narration all while the story escalates into weirder and weirder tangents and the tone shifts massively.
It's more deadpan and bizarre than comical but it makes for a very distinctive proposition (though maybe not unique, some of it evoked me Quentin Dupieux's work and his latest film, Au Poste) of a rambling, shocking but always ultimately uplifting and enthusiastic message (insomuch there's one).
And now I'm kinda sad he didn't make another feature since this one in 2013.
