Youth culture today is much like it was several generations ago in the early 20th century with one significant difference. We live in a more sexually relaxed society today, which is ironically less promiscuous than it was for young adults in the 60's, 70's, and 80's. Indeed, a higher percentage of children today reach their 19th and even 20th birthdays with their virginity than their parents did. It isn't uncommon, if you speak to this minority of young people, to hear outlandish, fantastical, or absurd descriptions of their ideal boyfriend/girlfriend or first sexual encounter. Childhood exposure to "sweet romance" films linger unhealthily and sabotage these older virgins. This is especially true in Japan, where depopulation is a serious social issue.
Hirokazu Koreeda's Air Doll is a film about this phenomenon, or I interpret it as one. Unfortunately, any review you read is going to be jaded by the film's abyss of ambiguity. A few of the director's intentions are identifiable, but a lot of it features the titular doll wandering about and experiencing her new human life. These segments are well-filmed and emotionally grounded in a generic childhood discovery theme, lacking the more interesting focal points of the director's other films. The viewer is thus left to apply cultural implications to the film for it to be more than pure cinema.
The air doll is an inflatable sex toy owned by a middle-aged man who calls her Nozomi and treats her as his girlfriend. They eat dinner together, walk through the park, and have sex all on his schedule, and he loves her a lot. Nozomi "realizes (she) has a heart" and wakes up one day when her master goes to work. She wanders around for a while, taking everything in, and visits a movie store. She begins working there and falls in love with one of her coworkers. More wonder sequences play, this time featuring the pair's almost-dialog free courtship. On paper it sounds mundane, but lead actress Bae Doona bolsters the emotionality of these scenes with her performance which is reminiscent of a Disney Princess role minus the artificial sentiment. The camera frequently grants us a close ups of her and her boyfriend, encouraging our intimacy with their romance.
Koreeda overtly references Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, specifically in Nozomi's observation of a girl who mistakes a fork for a comb. The girl's father tells her that a fork isn't for grooming, which becomes entwined with the narrative when Nozomi punctures herself. Her boyfriend "blows life into her" through her air hole, an indirect form of sexual expression, but Nozomi doesn't understand its implications. This reaffirms the latent misogyny of the many Disney films, where the woman character subtly confuses her psychological needs with those of society and her prince. A perfect conclusion follows: Nozomi stabs her boyfriend in his navel to breathe into him, and he bleeds to death. Her desire for mutual intimacy cannot be realized, and she suffers for it. In her grief, she throws herself in a trash heap.
Perhaps Air Doll can thus be seen as an encompassing metaphor for coming social collapse brought about by youth's (Japanese or otherwise) alienation from itself. Beyond the birth rate decline, people are more likely to encourage their perversions when they are entirely alone. Watching contrived romantic films only worsens an already vulnerable populace's efforts to get what it wants, at some level.
Recommended
Hirokazu Koreeda's Air Doll is a film about this phenomenon, or I interpret it as one. Unfortunately, any review you read is going to be jaded by the film's abyss of ambiguity. A few of the director's intentions are identifiable, but a lot of it features the titular doll wandering about and experiencing her new human life. These segments are well-filmed and emotionally grounded in a generic childhood discovery theme, lacking the more interesting focal points of the director's other films. The viewer is thus left to apply cultural implications to the film for it to be more than pure cinema.
The air doll is an inflatable sex toy owned by a middle-aged man who calls her Nozomi and treats her as his girlfriend. They eat dinner together, walk through the park, and have sex all on his schedule, and he loves her a lot. Nozomi "realizes (she) has a heart" and wakes up one day when her master goes to work. She wanders around for a while, taking everything in, and visits a movie store. She begins working there and falls in love with one of her coworkers. More wonder sequences play, this time featuring the pair's almost-dialog free courtship. On paper it sounds mundane, but lead actress Bae Doona bolsters the emotionality of these scenes with her performance which is reminiscent of a Disney Princess role minus the artificial sentiment. The camera frequently grants us a close ups of her and her boyfriend, encouraging our intimacy with their romance.
Koreeda overtly references Disney's version of The Little Mermaid, specifically in Nozomi's observation of a girl who mistakes a fork for a comb. The girl's father tells her that a fork isn't for grooming, which becomes entwined with the narrative when Nozomi punctures herself. Her boyfriend "blows life into her" through her air hole, an indirect form of sexual expression, but Nozomi doesn't understand its implications. This reaffirms the latent misogyny of the many Disney films, where the woman character subtly confuses her psychological needs with those of society and her prince. A perfect conclusion follows: Nozomi stabs her boyfriend in his navel to breathe into him, and he bleeds to death. Her desire for mutual intimacy cannot be realized, and she suffers for it. In her grief, she throws herself in a trash heap.
Perhaps Air Doll can thus be seen as an encompassing metaphor for coming social collapse brought about by youth's (Japanese or otherwise) alienation from itself. Beyond the birth rate decline, people are more likely to encourage their perversions when they are entirely alone. Watching contrived romantic films only worsens an already vulnerable populace's efforts to get what it wants, at some level.
Recommended