As promised here’s a wrap up of the movies I screened at Fantastic Fest 2013.
Greatful Dead
Alongside the coverage here, I also wrote reviews about several of the movies for The Horn. The Japanese feature Greatful Dead, which enjoyed it’s world premiere at the Festival, fell in that category.
Greatful Dead (Gureitofuru deddo), the newest film from Japanese director Eiji Uchida (Last Days of the World), paints a darkly comic portrait of a disturbed young woman. The unsettling, but flawed, picture follows a descent into madness.
Nami (Kumi Takiuchi) grew up in a fractured household. Her mother (who cares more for poor foreign children than her own) abandons Nami and her older sister; her father spirals into depression and starts dating a beautiful younger woman; Nami’s older sister runs off with her boyfriend so she can have a “normal” life; and then her father commits suicide. All before she turns eighteen.
When she turns twenty, Nami inherits a sizable fortune, which enables her to engage fully in her secret life as voyeur. She prefers watching elderly men, who live alone with minimal contact with others. Nami calls these people “solitarians.”
Read the rest of my review at The Horn.
