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Review

Young director Mitsuru Meike only had to make a typical Japanese “pink film” – a softcore sex movie with the requisite number of carnal unions to satisfy the perv contingency. But he had other ideas up his sleeve, and after Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai was initially released in an hour-length, sex-driven variant (receiving acclaim even in that incarnation), Meike recut this full-length director’s version – and in the process, delivered the most bizarre cinematic socio-political critique imaginable: picture a skinflick directed by Godard and the “South Park” boys, and you’d only be about halfway there. Prostitute Sackiko Hanai is accidentally shot in the head during a yakuza skirmish in a restaurant, but the wound acts as a sort of trepanation, turning her into a genius capable of complex dissertations on metaphysics, existentialism, and the work of Noam Chomsky, which causes her to be hired as the amorous tutor to a professor’s teenage son. But it turns out that the mysterious cylinder coveted by the gangsters contains a severed finger that is a clone of the finger of George W. Bush, which North Korea wants to launch a nuclear attack. But the Bush finger has a mind (and levitation powers) of its own, and wishes to penetrate Sachiko (“I do not need the U.N.’s permission to invade!”) through orifices both vaginal and cranial, just as a gangster attempts to retrieve the severed digit to aid in the unification of North and South Korea. This is actually even more difficult to describe – and even more hilarious and outlandish – than one could possibly envision, and if you’ve ever wondered what Fahrenheit 9/11 might look like with semen facials and an a cappella Japanese rendition of our national anthem, this is the smut film for you. Astonishing. (Japanese with English subtitles)