Non-ko

Colour, 35 mm
Japan, 2008, 105 min
Section: Another View – Tokyo FilmeX Presents

Synopsis

Nobuko dreamed of making it as an actress in Tokyo. Instead, the thirtysomething divorcee, whose filmography comprises a handful of adult movies, moved back to her small-town home where she helps her family maintain a Shinto shrine. Her friends call her by her stage name, Non-ko, a constant reminder of the desolate, ideal-deprived woman’s failure, as is the door to her room at her parents’ house, still covered with images of childhood heroes. Those around her have written Non-ko off, and even she has given up striving for happiness. Then suddenly two men enter her life: an idealistic, resolute young man, and her ex-husband. As is his style, the director employs a strongly empathetic and indiscriminately direct approach to outsiders. With the inclusion of unaffected sex scenes, which significantly help to flesh out the heroine’s character, the movie aligns itself with the legacy of sophisticated "women’s” erotic movies of 1970s Japan.

About the director

Kazuyoshi Kumakiri (b. 1974, Obihiro, Japan) numbers among the top talents trained for the Japanese film industry by the Osaka University of Arts. His graduation film served as his debut feature: Banquet of the Beasts (Kichiku dai enkai, 1997). This provocative meditation, shot along the lines of exploitation cinema with underground overtones, was screened at a number of international festivals, then released in foreign distribution. Although the film was also a success in Japan, it took four years before the director came out with his second feature, Hole in the Sky (Sora no ana, 2001). As a rule, Kumakiri develops motifs involving outsiders, isolation, and the condensed actions of people in critical situations. This holds true for both his own projects and those he makes as a director-for-hire, e.g. the melancholy, action sci-fi flick Freesia: Bullets Over Tears (Furiijia, 2007).