Japanese Film Festival 2018

The Melbourne leg of the Japanese Film Festival runs from Thursday, 22 November to Sunday, 2 December. Milk Bar Mag is here to guide you through the stellar line-up of film that captures the mystique of traditional Japanese culture and grittiness of its cutting-edge contemporary culture. So, let’s do this.

First up is the festival opener, the programme darling. One Cut of the Dead is a viral micro-budget genre-bender that is bound to enthuse. The action-packed spectacle is a hilarious satire on the zombie comedy genre. Selling out screenings across Japan, the film is a mix of monster mayhem and family dramedy.

Another beautiful film is Love at Least. Debut director Kosai Sekine’s masterpiece captures the nuances of love and follows the love triangle of Yasuko – a woman suffering from mental illness and hypersomnia whose condition renders the most inane task impossible – her indifferent boyfriend Tsunagi and his ex-girlfriend who plans to win him back. Saccharinely so, the film will pierce your heart. Sekine will be in attendance at the Saturday, 24 November screening in a post-film Q&A session.

Oh Lucy! This outrageous film follows the life of a single, emotionally unfulfilled woman, who is seemingly stuck with a drab, meaningless life in Tokyo. That is, until she is convinced to enrol in an English class that requires her to wear a blonde wig and take on an American alter ego (Lucy) as per the strange advice of her teacher. Starring Shinobu Terajima and Josh Hartnett, the film becomes a worldwide manhunt when Lucy’s teacher goes missing and she sets off to search for him. Intelligent, hilarious, one of a kind, Oh Lucy! is our crowd favourite.