The NYAFF has started!

For the past few years, I have been going to the New York Asian film festival to see crazy Japanese splatter films. This year I decided to go for something a bit less strange: the opening night Screening of Milocrorze: A Love Story.
 The movie is really complex in terms of plot, and so I am not going to try to summarize it. Instead I want to mention that the visuals for the film were excellently expressive and appropriate. They made it easy to differentiate between the three main characters (all played by Takayuki Yamada) and storylines. The above picture shows the pastel world of the young Ovreneli Vreneligare. The visuals are kind of a combination of a childs drawing, 90s photo manipulation, and a rainbow.

Suddenly, there is a change of style and the setting changes to a pseudo-retro game show. The overall feeling is 70s sleaze, kind of like if Austin Powers was set in japan, but a lot funnier. The character of Besson Kumagai is so terribly obnoxious with his backup dancers, platform shoes, and hair bowtie. This middle part seems to be mostly a comedy, but is just as visually thorough as the first love story. The characters wear afro wigs and body suits, striped turtlenecks, and have a vintage style that sits on the edge of ugly and cool. There are fewer after effects type animations, and there is no more glitter.

The story segues into an ancient (or current?) scene, set in a gambling parlor. the noble Tamon seems to have transported himself back in time to find his lost lover. Everything is black, white, and shades of red. It is hard to think of the connection between the three stories (visually, there is none) besides the love story in all sections. There is a really amazing fight scene that seems to go on forever (in a good way). It was shot with special high speed cameras that capture gravity or the seeming lack of it in a novel way.

There are tatami flying everywhere.

So that is what I did yesterday. I saw one of the most visually interesting films I have ever seen. You should see it because i cant really describe how cool it was.