TAKASHI MIIKE: BIG BANG LOVE, JUVENILE A

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Takashi Miike: Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

Story:Ariyoshi Jun (Matsuda Ryuhei), who worked at a gay bar, is sexually assulted by a customer, goes into a frenzy and kills the man. While being transported to jail, Jun meets another young male: Katzuki Shiro (Ando Masanobu) an impressive youth with curious tattoos and looks that could kill. Shiro soon displays his brute force from the beginning. The timid Jun is attracted to Shiro's intensity and strength. Jun is the only person that Shiro opens up to as they accept each other for who they are.A guard witnesses an incident. One of the young men strangles another prisoner with all his might in a common area. The corpse has breathed his last breath. It's Shiro. Tears flow down the face of the young man who turns to the guard. It's Jun.

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Enigmatic and visually mesmerizing, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A lies at the core of Takashi Miike's moral universe like a rare, precious stone shining with intensity. Miike's singular talent challenges the audience with an absolute cinematic freedom, here infusing a variety of symbols and multifaceted metaphors - from rocket ships to Mayan pyramids and half-eclipsed tattoos - that radiate a flickering light on the violence, desire and loneliness caged in this powerful, homoerotic prison drama.

An offbeat, unconventional narrative relates the stories of quiet Jun (Ryuhei Matsuda) and aggressive Shiro (Masanobu Ando), two young men incarcerated for two unrelated murders. Their tale is limned with modern dance performance, young boys' rites of passage and the silent investigation of the institution's warden, whose questions appear in superimposed titles.

Obscure beams that seem to have materialized from a primordial big bang illuminate fragments of Jun's and Shiro's past and present lives. Jun has brutally assassinated a gay-bar patron in a shady hotel room, and Shiro has a history of crime going back to his childhood. Like angels fallen from heaven, they seem to share the same sorrowful soul. They are naturally drawn together within the prison's walls, in a losing battle against the authorities and the other inmates.

But one day Shiro is found strangling Jun's corpse.

Contemplative and soulful, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A is destined to surprise Miike's devoted fans and to capture the attention of viewers searching for a new kind of meditative storytelling or looking for a visual treat. The film's stark cinematography sheds oblique light on the austerity of the prison and, casting ghostly shades that evoke a twisted world of memories, embodies the nightmarish quality of this intense, dramatic tale. Set mainly in theatre-like stages, the film displays an experimental core and speaks a disjointed, deconstructed language.

Approaching his seventieth film, Miike continues to be a revelation. Once again actors and audience alike are guided by his assured directorial hand through the labyrinth of his visionary philosophy.

- Giovanna Fulvi

Takashi Miike was born in Osaka and graduated from the Japan Academy of Moving Images. His features include Shinjuku Triad Society (95), Rainy Dog (97), Full Metal Yakuza (97), Blues Harp (98), Audition (99), Dead or Alive (00), Dead or Alive 2 (00), Visitor Q (01), The Happiness of the Katakuris (01), Dead or Alive: Final (02), Shangi-La (02) and Izo (04). Six of his films have screened at the Festival: Fudoh: The New Generation (97), The City of Lost Souls (00), Ichi the Killer (01), Gozu (03), Zebraman (04), and The Great Yokai War (05). Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (06) is his most recent film.