It’s the sort of pick-up that only a few distribs would dare gamble on – Hitoshi Matsumoto (Big Man Japan, Symbol) is after all, one of the more unique film voices in the off the wall, absurd comedy genre manner. Tim League’s Drafthouse Films have stepped up to plate, and picked up Matsumoto’s R100 which comes fresh from TIFF and a Fantastic Fest showing. Expect a 2014 release next year.
Gist: “R100” (a riff on the Japanese movie rating system, whose equivalent to NC-17 is R18) tells the story of lonely everyman, Takafumi Katayama, who hires a boutique S&M agency that specialize in random acts of extreme public degradation. At first, this changes his outlook on life for the better, but a bizarre accident violates the terms of the contract and hurdles Takafumi into a confounding spiral that will test his very soul.
Worth Noting: Matsumoto’s last two films did not receive distribution in the U.S.
Do We Care?: We’re huge fans of the filmmaker and there has been a wave of positive reviews – but as Nicholas mentioned in his review, “fans of Matsumoto are likely to be reeled in, but inexplicable twists and turns aggravate its intermittent flashes of interest.”
