Dolls
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.5
Three interwoven portraits of alienation and sadness - a couple attached by a symbolic umbilical cord (!) wander through the countryside because the man's parents want to break up their relationship, an old man reunites with a former love who waits for him every day on a park bench (with lunch!) and an obsessive fan of a pop singer blinds himself when he finds out her face was mangled - are done in an overwrought, if consistently gorgeous, style. Kitano keeps the violence to a bare minimum, but he O.D.s on his own symbolism (red, red, everywhere!) and the characters' brooding; one saving grace - for me at least - is that even though I was put off by their - and the film's - self-pity, at least everyone's impeccably dressed (courtesy of the truly awesome Yohji Yamamoto).
