{"id":5146,"date":"2014-10-24T07:45:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-24T06:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/?p=5146"},"modified":"2016-08-07T22:25:23","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T21:25:23","slug":"the-world-of-kanako","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk\/reviews\/2014\/10\/24\/the-world-of-kanako\/","title":{"rendered":"The World of Kanako"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The World of Kanako<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

\nFormat:<\/B> DVD

\nRelease date:<\/B> 15 August 2016

\nDistributor:<\/B> Metrodome

\nDirector:<\/B> Tetsuya Nakashima

\nWriters:<\/B> Tetsuya Nakashima, Miako Tadano, Nobuhiro Monma

\nBased on the novel by:<\/B> Akio Fukamachi

\nCast:<\/B> Kôji Yakusho, Nana Komatsu, Satochi Tsumabuki

\nOriginal title:<\/B> Kawaki<\/i>

\nJapan 2014

\n118 mins\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

From Memories of Matsuko<\/i><\/a> through to this new offering, director Tetsuya Nakashima has developed a striking world of intense violence, emotional and physical, punctuated by moments of candy-coloured exuberance. While Matsuko<\/i>, Confessions<\/i><\/a> and The World of Kanako<\/i> were all adapted from novels written by different authors, there is a continuing fascination for adolescent girls and the strange closed-off realm they inhabit running through them (as well as through Nakashima\u2019s earlier Kamikaze Girls<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n

K\u00f4ji Yakusho, a favourite of the great Kiyoshi Kurosawa\u2019s, plays Akikazu Fujishima, a washed-out former detective searching for his missing estranged daughter Kanako at the request of his distraught ex-wife. In the course of his investigation, he uncovers a vicious underworld of drugs, brutality and sexual exploitation. As terrible secrets are revealed, he is also forced to face the memories of his own actions as a father and husband. <\/p>\n

Akikazu is a man who can only express himself and relate to the world through violence. His approach to the people around him, whether he feels affection or aversion for them, is pretty much limited to shouting, beating and raping. And although the film\u2019s focus is on Kanako, it is really Akikazu\u2019s vision of the world that the audience is plunged into, and it is a fairly relentless, harrowing experience. As the film progresses, it is as if the violence inside him became increasingly visible physically, as if it could no longer be contained: as he is forced to face himself, his already unkempt appearance gradually descends into full-on bruised and blood-stained messiness.<\/p>\n

A gaping absence at the heart of the story, Kanako remains a question mark that looms over the film, an enigma that remains mostly unresolved. Essentially unknowable, she is outlined only through other people\u2019s perceptions of her, people who all have deep, passionate, powerful feelings about her. Here as in Confessions<\/i>, teenagers are troubling, ambiguous creatures, simultaneously playful and cruel, childlike and knowing, unpredictably alternating between innocence and nastiness, to the utter bewilderment and dismay of the adults around them \u2013 and Kanako is the ultimate example of that. But just as in Confessions<\/i>, adults are capable of terrible acts of revenge for the wrong done to their loved ones. As morally murky as Confessions<\/i>, and as emotionally intense as Memories of Matsuko<\/i>, The World of Kanako<\/i> is a visceral dive into hearts of darkness and the ties that bind them.<\/p>\n

Virginie Sélavy<\/B><\/I><\/p>\n

This review is part of our London Film Festival 2014 coverage<\/a>.<\/div>\n

Watch the trailer:<\/b><\/p>\n