re:mote voices

Title: Gozu
Cast: Hideki Sone, Sho Aikawa, Kimika Yoshino, Shohei Hino, Keiko Tomita, Harumi Sone, Renji Ishibashi
Director: Takashi Miike

Miike Takashi’s most widely released film to date was Audition, which really brought him to world attention. Since then a few of his films have had limited cinema release in the UK – Ichi The Killer toured as part of the London Film Festival, while the Happiness Of The Katikuras showed as part of the first Asia Extreme season. This year sees Gozu included in the second of UGC/Tartan Video’s Asia Extreme season, giving it a week or two in selected cinemas.

In terms of content and themes Gozu is probably similar to Visitor Q, which perhaps unsurprisingly didn’t get a cinema release, though can be picked up as a recent DVD release. Many of the taboos that Takashi played with in Visitor Q are present in Gozu, other than necrophilia. Hmm. Well actually, I guess that depends how you define necrophilia...

Gozu surrounds a yakuza crew, the crime groups being something which have featured in a good number of Takashi’s films – City Of Lost Souls, Dead Or Alive, and the Yakuza Trilogy to name a few. In this case the boss has decided that one of his deputies has lost it, and sends him off to another town to be killed and for the body to be disposed of. Things are going to plan until his friend and driver gets to the town in question, where the brother is dead, but his body has gone missing. The young yakuza is left to desperately try and find the missing body in a strange town.

At every step Minami is faced with the assertion that he isn’t from around here is he? Which is never a good sign when arriving somewhere new, especially when it comes from such a strange string of characters. Seeming to meet odd people at every turn, as he pieces sightings together.

Takashi lingers in weird territories with Gozu, which is where he is at his best, baffling the audience with the bizarre, rather than appalling them with violence.