The Thousands

If an angle is the soul of wit then “Japan you so crazy” is a straight line. And if a straight line is a road then sometimes you have to take the road more travelled. Because goddamnit Japan, you so crazy.

Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s Milocrorze is an anthology film of sorts with Takayuki Yamada (of Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins) in multiple roles. Though it can feel more like Eddie Murphy in The Klumps than Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets. It features the youth counsellor Besson Kumagai who “can instantly solve problems faced by young men in love” by giving them aggressive, nonsensical advice and breaking into dance routines with hot ladies in bikinis. The story of Tamon begins as a romance with a florist then transforms into a violent, stylised samurai film set in a hyperreal bordello. These vignettes are bookended by the story of Ovreneli Vreneligare, first as a child and later as an adult, hopelessly in love with the ageless, titular Milocrorze.

It comes as no surprise that Ishibasi’s directorial background is in advertisements and television sketch comedies. The film can feel like it was made by a lovelorn meth addict who has just completed a course in After Effects. This isn’t always to its detriment. A sword fighting sequence in the brothel, though perhaps overlong, is strikingly imaginative. Like the Crazy 88 sequence in Kill Bill Vol. 1 played out in one slow motion, horizontal tracking shot.

Like so many Japanese films it can leave you confused whether it just seems crazy because you don’t possess the required cultural context or whether it is, indeed, that crazy. I’ll let you make that call.