Visitor Q
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Movie Reviews of Visitor Q
Movie Review: have you ever...spent circa 90 mins shaking your head in disbelief?
Summary: 4 Stars
as an evertonian the answer is, sadly, more times than i care to remember. this was the first film to elicit the same response though.
i'm familiar with a few of miike's films (audition being the pick of those i've seen) but have never been subjected to seing nearly every taboo being touched upon (actually prodded - and none too gently - might be more appropriate word), and it's not for the want of trying on my part either. drugs, , incest, necrophilia as well as self abuse (no, not that kind!) and domestic violence.
the film is blackly comic throughout, as well as bizarre. the plot has been summed up better by other reviewers but my own take is that the nameless character (dubbed visitor q) comes to destroy a family, for reaons not revealed. finding that there's in fact nothing to destroy (they seem to be doing fine without him), instead his presence ends up binding the family together through necrophilia and murder. which is some going as the father would show/ endure anything just to get on tv (witness his 'interview' with the 'youth of today'), the daughter is a prostitute (with 'early bird' specials!), the son is being bullied at school and in turn beats up his mother (while father looks on), who pleads that he doesn't touch her face, cos she needs to keep her looks in order to turn tricks to support her drug habit. the dialogue between the father and visitor q never rises beyond the banal ('i'm off to bed', 'goodnight then'). the galvanising effect of the vistor's presence gradually draws the family together through one means or another (funniest line is probably after the second(!) lactation scene, when the father mutters "she hasn't been this competent since we got married").
it's has mentioned what actors are prepared to be put through for their art, and i must single out the mother for special praise. one of the most excrutiating scenes sees her with a client being intimately examined and then whipping the client at his request - she complies of course but every movement shows how he might be getting something from it, but she isn't. then there's the whole lactation thing...
one of the characters says very early on that the children are the future of japan. from what i've seen and read whatever opinions we may have of the japanese (salaryman etc), they are capable of being as dysfunctional as everyone else, thanks for asking.
Movie Review: Disturbing, surreal, exploitive and only for the daring.
Summary: 4 Stars
This 2001 film by Takashi Miike has to count as one of the most disturbing film's I have ever seen. I have seen my share and yet this film still made me wince and turn away from the screen a few times. Takashi Miike has been called the Japanese Quentin Tarantino, but that is an understatement. Miike would've shown in full-glory Mr. Blonde cutting off that tied-up cop's ear. Not just show it but do it up close and replay it in slow-motion. Miike would've shown exactly what was going on behind Marcel Wallace and how he and his homies got medieval on those Klan rednecks. Miike doesn't pull any punches and adds in a kick and a stab and twists the knife just to be sure.
Visitor Q (Bizita Q in Japan) is Miike's take on the nature of violence and sex that has permeated the media with a nod towards reality TV. His film is especially revelant since it was filmed and first shown in Japan. A nation and culture that blames the West for its decadence and immorality when at the same time its entertainment industry churns out anime, manga and films that put Western entertainment to shame, i.e. tentacles and more tentacles.
The plot is simple and straightforward. A failed former TV reporter tries to provide for his family by filming a documentary concerning the effects of violence and sex on the youth of today. The rest of the film from there ends up showing this father's dysfunctional family involved in heavy drug abuse, their indifference to violence around them, incest, necrophilia, and a few other things I don't even know the name for.
Bizita Q is a film that Marquis De Sade would have trouble sitting through. But despite the disturbing images and sequences in this film, Miike does make a good point about the subject of sex and violence in the media and its effect on youth and just people in general. After awhile, those I was watching the film with stopped turning their face from the screen and began watching the film without flinching. This is a film that is definitely not for everybody, but if you are brave enough and have the stomach for it, Miike's film is a good study in gross excess and surrealism in film. He straddles between fine art and extreme exploitation, and after the first few minutes falls on the latter, revels and doesn't apologize.
Movie Review: The World's Most Dysfunctional Family
Summary: 4 Stars
From the perspective of content "Visitor Q" is perhaps the outermost extension of Japanese director Takashi Miike's wild and tenacious tendency to discuss taste and taboo. This time however he couches his discourse in a purposefully flat, washed out digital video aesthetic, which works in contrast to the highly stylised sado-masochistic dystopia of "Ichi the Killer" or the genre confounding shock treatment of "Audition". The disintegration of the family and its redemption is an overriding theme in Miike's film, and in this film he creates a family wallowing in a vile pit of perversions and repressions. These perversions are allowed life because of the fragmented nature of the family and the disunity that badly needs repairing. Adding to Miike's stock in trade images of torture, anal violation and beheading we have necrophilia and incest. However it's quite easy in the west to get sidetracked into placing too much attention on the transgressive elements of Miike's cinema; something our critics regularly do. I personally believe that one of Miike's motives in celebrating such excess is a clever awareness of the politics of cult film reception in the west, and he constructs his films in a manner which self-consciously appeals to such a reading (in this respect comparisons with Tarantino are wholly appropriate).
Beyond the vile, degrading and disgusting behaviour displayed in "Visitor Q" is ultimately a tale about familial alienation, parental failure and repressed emotions and desires. The titular visitor is the enigmatic, unknown and unknowable quantity that repairs the broken family, his motives are never known. The visitor also has a direct relationship with Miike's objective camera, suggesting on some level that the visitor is aligned with the audience. The presentation of the film is stylistically coherent, and all the more impressive for its ultra low budget ($70,000). Miike enjoys the freedom the digital format gives him, and as Lynch did with "Inland Empire" gets up to all kinds of subjective/objective point of view mischief. This is an excellent example of Miike's exaggerated content, working in tandem with an unexaggerated style.
Movie Review: Visitor Q
Summary: 4 Stars
A singular nuclear Japanese family - father, mother, son, daughter - spend a movie committing incest, physical parental abuse, necrophilia, murder and dismemberment, and various other weird and wicked deeds. A mysterious, rock-wielding, scruffy young man joins the family and, eventually, changes occur.
Words like `aberrant' and `taboo-bashing' are used inadequately to describe Takashi Miike's VISITOR Q. It's an ink-black dark comedy, one that lingers over and delights in shocking scenes that more polite sleazy movies only hint at.
For instance, VISITOR Q opens with an off-camera woman asking "Did you ever do it with your dad?" A question immediately followed by Daughter and Dad haggling over price and service. A disturbing conversation which continues through disrobement to consummation. It's a potentially unendurable scene that ends with Daughter taunting Dad by calling him "early bird." Dad's eventual remorse seems almost an afterthought. This isn't nearly the worst scene in the movie, either. I won't give it away, but that graphic and extended sequence begins with Dad saying "I don't care if you are a corpse...."
Strong stuff, but the movie holds its curiously upbeat characters at enough of a distance and blurs the difference between victim and victimizer often enough to make it safely surreal.
I liked VISITOR Q without really understanding what it meant or where it took us. For instance, the scruffy young man seemed to be a pivotal character but I don't know why he went around hitting people over the head with rocks. Maybe he was knocking sense into them. Maybe, as another character suggested, he was there to destroy the family. The final sequence is bizarre, a bit shocking, and indecipherable, as well. At least it seemed optimistic.
Movie Review: bizarre metaphor for family life
Summary: 4 Stars
wow. this movie really got to me. the first scene in the film establishes the depths of immoral and distastefulness that follows. opening with an intense scene where a man makes love to a young prostitute, then finding out who the prostitute is really strikes a nerve in you. the plot follows with almost no sense and no taste but presented with great acting and great direction. it's basically revolves around a family that each member has their own sick and twisted problems. normally in any other hollywood/american film you'd encounter only one of these problems [or some problems not at all] but all wrapped up together brings it together to produce a very interesting family. a visitor [i'm assuming 'visitor q'] enters into the situation. although i felt his actions weren't as impactful and uplifting as it should've been he still brought the whole family together in a well... less than wholesome way. with his violent and bizarre and intimate solutions, he teaches the lesson that "families should stick together under any circumstance". and trust me, some circumstances are incredibly messed up. this movie is one of those movies where you'll find yourself saying after many scenes "wow, i didn't think i'd ever see something like that in a movie" but then you'll be found laughing over it. it is disturbing, but really if you're like me and you watch a lot of these over-the-top movies it'll still shock you but not in a 'irreversible-rape-scene' kind of way. great flick, way more enjoyable and stimulating than 'happiness of the kitakuris'. takashi miike is awesome.