Trappings

Der Spatz im Kamin/The Sparrow in the Chimney (2024) - Zürcher The Zürcher Brothers' 'animal trilogy' concludes with The Sparrow in the Chimney, another chamber piece that takes place in a summer Swiss lakeside house bathed in golden sunlight, where a simmering tension builds in a confined space as the family plans for a birthday celebration. Ramon, wearing director and writer's hat (and Silvan taking producer's role), concocts a wordy, ensemble piece around the always great Maren Eggert (a great German actress and the lead in many of Angela Schanellec’s films) as Karen, an unloved and unappreciated mother of three trying to plan a birthday party for her unfaithful husband, Markus.

The film starts with typical Zürcher fashion with static portraiture of two daughters: Johanna (Lea Zöe Voss) in her school, and Christina (Paula Schindler), the one who got away, on a plane coming home to attend her dad's birthday party. We see them behind the glass window from outside. This inside/outside theme is repeated throughout, with a sparrow flying out of the fireplace inside the house, leaving the trail of ash and leaving through the window early in the film, while the lake and its surroundings are taken over by the giant black commorants, ominously circling the sky- which beckon's the question: is outside any better?

Leon, the youngest of Karen's children, is seen prepping dinner for the whole extended family as they arrive, while Karen sleeps. Jule, Karen's sister and her husband and their baby daughter arrive. It is slowly revealed that the house Karen's family lives in belongs to Karen and Jule's deceased mother - the house the sisters grew up in, and the mother's shadow still looms large. It is also revealed that Karen's decision to move into the house after mother's death was not a favorable one for everyone else in the family.

Things are definitely not ok in Karen's household: the kids resent her. Leon is bullied in school and gets beat up a lot. Johanna, always an attention seeker, is testing her budding sexuality on any male figure around her. Christina has her reasons to be withdrawn. Markus is having an affair with Liv (Luise Heyer), a mentally unstable woman who took up residence in a cabin across from the house (used by the deceased mother and her lesbian lover) and has been watching over the family's dog.

The Sparrow in the Chimney is a densely scripted film where many things are said, yet nothing is said directly - the family dynamics here are not straightforward affairs and their feelings and thoughts are not communicated. Their cruelty to animals shows their frustrations with one another. We get the glimpse of their lives and past histories, but there's no big eureka moment until the end.

As with their last two films, Strange Little Cat and The Girl with the Spider, The Sparrow presents Zürcher's unique visual style - a blocking to create a claustrophobic atmosphere where everyone's cramped in the kitchen corridors, squeaking by each other and going in and out of static frames, and in and out of windows. The difference of The Sparrow here is that Zürcher's scope of visual filmmaking has grown and much more expansive. Karen's elaborate nightmare/hallucination sequence is something to watch, as it provides the inner workings of her fears, desires and secret wishes being manifested.

The Sparrow in the Chimney examines the familial trappings and yearning for freedom which might not be as ideal as it appears to be. Beautifully realized with sensuous visual details of inanimate objects to animals alike, the film cements the unique storytelling talents of the Zürchers.

Goes Up and Down Again

28 Years Later (2025) - Boyle Not quite 28 years have passed since the first of 28 series, 28 Days later (which came out in 2002), Danny Boyle, Alex Garland and DP Anthony Dod Mantle reteam for the 3rd, and the first installment of a planned trilogy, 28 Years Later. While stylistically similar to the first one- shot with iPhone 15, instead of Mini DV of the first one, to keep up with times, and frenetic editing, there is no coherent narrative thread carrying over from the previous ones in the new one. It is stated in title cards that Continental Europe has eradicated the rage virus but the islands of England and Ireland are permanently quarantined and monitored by NATO patrol boats.

28 Years Later's setting is a self sufficient community in a small northern island off of the mainland, accessible only by a walkway that only opens in low tide. It is an ideal situation after the apocalyptic events: communal living where everyone is taught to have a role and contribute and share resources. These are all shown in Boyle's fast paced montage sequences. The meat of the plot is kind of a coming-of-age story of Spike, a 12 year old boy going to the mainland to hunt the infected, along with his father. It is a ritual of sorts for the surviving villagers. He has a terminally ill mother and there is no doctor on the island. The legend has it, there is a mad doctor who lives on the mainland.

Spike and his father's first outing introduces the bloated, slow moving, crawling zombies and scary, fast zombies alike, all naked and very cavemen-like. The chase sequences provide some good adrenalin rush. Disillusioned by his father's deception, Spike sneaks out to the mainland with his mother in order to find the mad doctor, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). He and his mother run into a Swedish Nato soldier mired in the mainland alone after his boat sank. Then there is zombie birth - how? Zombies have sex? The baby is not infected? Negates all the gene mutation theories of 28 Weeks Later? Then he finds Kelson, who wears iodine all over his body (that wards off the infected - according to him), and lives among the pile of human skulls and bones. He has crematorium and pyre burning day and night and has a very Buddhist view on birth and death.

Boyle and Garland is not really up to making a blockbuster here, even though 28 Years Later is extremely Spielbergian- full of sentimentality with half-assed philosophizing. The super tight trailer with Rudyard Kipling's creepy WW1 poem promised an exciting summer blockbuster ride. But Garland's fuzzy writing in this - referencing unintentionally hilarious medieval war footage that looks like a skit from Monty Python and equates that to surviving zombie wars and isolationism while saying very little about either, zombie baby birth and track suit wearing "I kick ass for Jesus!" religious cultist, is too scattered and lacks cohesion, as usual, just like the icky third act of the original.

As it clumsily sets up for the sequel by the end of the film, I am hoping that Nia DaCosta, who is slated to direct the next one, will take us into another direction and leave this silliness behind.

Deep Time

Underland (2025) - Petit Caves, underground waterways, mines, catacombs, scientific labs are some of the locations featured in Robert Macfarlane's bestselling non-fiction book, Underland. His prose, at once scientific, lyrical and philosophical, has been an open invitation and demystification of 'the awful darkness inside the world'. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time, the book is a revelatory dive into deep time, a contemplation of our fear of the dark void, reflection of a paralleled world underneath, the myths and memories and our deep connections to the unseen environment.

Underland happens to be one of my all-time favorite books. So, when it was announced that Robert Petit, a visual collaborator of MacFarlane - they did a short film, Upstream together, which features an aerial view of the Cairngorms Mountains and River Dee of Scotland, is directing it, it became one of my most anticipated films to see this year.

Narrated by actress Sandra Hüller whose clear and calm voice is a great match for the material, and voiced by archeologists, urban explorers and scientists, the film takes liberty from the book and sets this visual poem in 3 different locations in 5 chapters: a cenote and its labyrinthine cave systems in Mexico, Underground storm drains in Las Vegas and a science laboratory 2 kilometers underneath Canadian Rockies, each invoking heady metaphors, myth and human connection with our surroundings.

It starts in a black and white grainy pictures of an ancient ash tree, just like how the book starts. The ash tree is located in Mendip Hills of Somerset, where Macfarlane's childhood was spent. Beneath the tree presents the subterraneous passage into the underworld cavern.

Following Fatima Tec Pool, a Mexican archeologist and her team, into the 'entrance to the underworld', - an elaborate cave system where her Mayan ancestors congregated, Petit and his team - cinematographer Ruben Woodin Dechamps and producer Lauren Greenwood, crawl through the rocky, slimy, dark limestone caverns. With all their modern equipment, the archeologists wonder aloud how it must have been with Mayan explorers with only torches some thousands of years ago. For Pool, it's a personal journey to connect with her Mayan ancestors who treated the caves as a sacred place.

We are introduced to an urban explorer Bradley Garrett, who descends into the storm drain system under Vegas Strip. He explains the smell and texture of the system, a distinct sensory experience in an Anthropocene age. All these will be future caves, the remnants from our current civilization, he muses. There's a cryptic note on the concrete wall, warning the rise of water level when it rains.

Garrett witnesses the remnants of life in the drain system. People live down there: the undesirable, unseen people above ground making their way down to escape from the elements, even if that means risking drowning when flooded. It's not only humans, but underland is also filled with discarded materials - cars, washing machines, everything our modern world want to get rid of and make it out of sight.

Then there is Mariangela Lisanti, a theoretical physicist who is in search for Dark Matter, an unseen material that consists of 65 percent of all of our universe. It was her musings as a child looking up at the starry sky, wondering what we are made of. She and her colleagues find the suitable space to test, in which dark-matter particles bump into target material and scatter off atomic nuclei, resulting in a measurable nuclear recoil, 2 kilometers down in an underground laboratory, away from elements and noises. She knows well that her experiments might not result in finding the existence of Dark Matter in her lifetime. Nevertheless, she perseveres, with her childlike curiosity and wonder intact.

Petit and his team capture some glorious images of the subterranean world, conjuring not only physical but spiritual side of our understanding of the hidden world. The past, present and future mingle seamlessly as a sensory experience. As Pool's team reaches the end of the cave, they discover the ancient palm prints left on the wall by Maya people thousands of years ago. She stretches her hand to meet the old palm prints and, in that stillness and silence, deep down underground, we experience deep time.

Underland might be short on the political urgency in nature preservation of Macfarlane's book, but it is at once sensorial, philosophical experience to be had, preferably in a darkened theater.

Underland had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival and will also play at DC/Dox on 6/12.

Dispicable in the Making

The Apprentice (2023) - Abbasi Unlike the all the drama and embellishment of political biopics - aka. Oliver Stone style filmmaking, Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice is just as brutal and succinct as the subject it is depicting in its lean, two-hour running time. At their early meeting the mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) tells the young, ambitious New York real estate heir Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), the three rules to live by - ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK, DENY EVERYTHING, ADMIT NOTHING, AND NEVER ADMIT DEFEAT, ALWAYS WIN NO MATTER WHAT THE COST. Roy Cohn, the prosecutor of the Rosenberg Trial and later became a notorious lawyer/fixer of all the shady and powerful people in New York, shaped Trump's world view, whether Trump admits it or not - the pattern has been quite clear now for everyone to see.

Much of the criticism of the film comes from the dislike of its subject. Why do we need to see this piece of shit on screen and give him even more attention than he deserves? - which is understandable. But if anything, The Apprentice is the reaffirmation of our hatred of this callous, disgusting man. The film just gives more insights on how Trump has become what he has become - a homophobe, germaphobe, sexist, cruel and vindictive, cheap human trash. And Cohn and Trump deserved each other.

Sebastian Stan is outstanding in portraying Trump with his mannerisms and facial expressions, but not as a caricature. But it's Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn who steals the show. A ruthless, closeted gay man with the McCarthy era patriotism, who later died of AIDS. His ghostly stares and monotonous delivery depict a truly ghoulish man. Maria Bakalova plays Ivana Trump, giving the Trump's first wife a little bit of humanity, who supposedly fell down the stairs and died, and buried in a Trump golf course. It shows the pattern of Trump's disgusting views on women over the years.

The Apprentice doesn't explain how we got here. As we are experiencing the second term of this human garbage in the White House. The thorough reexamination on the validity of The American Dream, manifest destiny, just when America was great, and to whom? should be in order.

Hardboiled Wonderland

The Big Combo (1955) - Lewis Here is the setup: The hardboiled detective, Diamond (Cornel Wilde) is on the trail of a blonde mob girl, Susan (Jean Wallace), in order to get to the ruthless mob boss Mr. Brown (Richard Conte). But Mr. Brown is a cautious and methodical man to pin down of any wrong doing. Also, our detective is falling for the blonde. With no evidence of crimes, his police captain is pressuring him to let go of the Brown case. But Diamond is relentless.

With Mr. Brown's henchmen Fante (young Lee Van Cleef) and Mingo (Earl Holliman) knocking off any witness or associates one by one, including Diamond's brunette burlesque girl, Rita (Helene Stanton), things are getting personal....

The Big Combo is all about John Alton the cinematographer. Jean Wallace glimmers. Lee Van Cleef's never been this angular under the dim overhead lighting. The smokes, rapid machine gun fire, and shadows, those shadows. It's all too damn gorgeous. Who cares about the morality tale if you got those shadows?

Act of Remembering

A Useful Ghost (2025) - Boonbunchachoke Cinema, capturing moving images in time and space, projecting them and promising endless reanimation, is the ghostliest of all media. Ghosts, in literature and films, in large part, have been staple stand-ins for the unfinished businesses. With that in mind, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's feature debut, A Useful Ghost tells a very queer ghost story within a story about the importance of remembering. Set in modern day Thailand, the layered film takes the traditional Asian vengeful ghost story horror trope, but told with a great deal of deadpan humor. It suggests that remembering the dead, in our exploitative neoliberal world on the brink of environmental catastrophe, can be an act of resistance.

A Useful Ghost starts with our protagonist (Wisarut Homhuan) introducing themselves only as an 'academic ladyboy', having trouble with their vacuum cleaner. A handsome repairman shows up at their doorstep and starts telling an enchanting ghost story. His yarn unfolds in a factory which makes household appliances. A worker dies of an illness at the job and his ghost haunts the place, by taking over various machines and appliances. The owner, Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon), who inherited the factory from her dead husband, has to shut down the factory until the place is exorcized.

In the meantime, Suman's son March (Wisarut Himmarat), a grieving widower, is visited by the ghost of his dead wife, Nat (Davika Hoorne), who died of air pollution related illness, in the form of a red vacuum cleaner. It's not a good sight as March makes out with a vacuum cleaner while the company elders tour the haunted factory. Suman and the elders try to stop this unholy relationship in various ways (including electroshock therapy). They only tolerate their reunion when she becomes useful in driving out other pesky ghosts, just like Suman’s first born gay son whom they accepted- only, when his Australian born husband turns out to be useful as business liaison.

Soon the rich and powerful friends of Suman seek Nat's exorcising service, as they are haunted by the ghosts of people who died in government crackdown under military dictatorship, industrial accident, etc. In turn, they will grant Nat and March to conceive a child through artificial insemination - because ghosts have no legal rights.

At this point of storytelling, our ladyboy protagonist is furious. “Nat is a traitor to the other ghosts!” He only relents at the charm of the handsome repairman as the story continues.

A Useful Ghost speaks volumes about how the neoliberal society operates: the rich and powerful trying to erase inconvenient truths and their misdeeds while only feigning tolerance when it's financially beneficial to them. The electroshock therapy scenes are both hilarious in its absurdity and frightening-- frightening because they are reminders of the sex-conversion therapy pressed upon the young LGBTQ community and also the frequent torture tactics under a military dictatorship.

Boonbunchachoke not only takes the Asian horror trope of a vengeful ghost, but plays with the concept of ghosts both physically and metaphorically to get his message across. He understands the ghostliness of the film medium, as many transition shots resemble overexposed burnt out last frames of a film as they roll out of the film gate of the camera leaving the ghostly image.

The cold, urban liminal spaces mise-en-scene, as well as retro design of appliances, practical effects and deadpan delivery of the actors, all add to the success of this absurdist, yet poignant comedy. Great mix of humor and messaging, A Useful Ghost is an accomplished debut film by a promising director.

A Useful Ghost makes a world premiere in Critics Week section of Cannes 2025.

Existential Angst in Animated Feature

La mort n'existe pas/Death Does Not Exist (2025) - Dufour-Laperriére A group of young activists are about to embark on their plan to kill an industrialist in her remote mansion in the forest. Their aim is to shock the status-quo of powers that be, as the rich and powerful destroy nature without any repercussions. Their actions will make ripples.

But Hélène, a young member of the group, is having second thoughts about the terrorist act she is about to be part of. Their plan plays out with many casualties on both sides, with Hélène, frozen in fear, witnessing all the carnage, especially the graphic death of a young man who professed his love for her.

Before their attack, he hands her a letter in an envelope and she says she would read it after their deeds. As the film progresses, this unopened letter becomes a portal to Hélène gaining her second chance.

The rest of the film is Hélène's internal struggle/dialog that's taking place over idealism, identity and morality. Her opposition is in the form of Manon, one of her fellow activists friends, who might or might not have perished in the attack, to chastise Hélène's indecisions and inaction. With the armed guards as well as wolves on their trail, they hike deeper into the woods.

Artistry in Death Does Not Exist by Canadian-French animator Félix Dufour-Laperriére's is unique and striking. Unlike the multiple animation techniques he deployed in his last film Archipelago (2021), that included some live action sequences and still photos, Death features simply drawn - outlines of the facial features and bodies without any discernible details, except for hairstyles - characters in monochrome (uniformly yellow, green in different tones, etc), and nature and buildings with some other muted colors just to distinguish from one another. There's an elegance in his minimalist aesthetics, and it all serves to showcase the inner turmoil of Hélène and its time bending, dream-like narrative.

The most visually exciting parts are the statues of wolves in the greenhouse of the industrialist's mansion that starts the film with, as their snarling facial expressiones change in the lighting from different angles and and the sequences of cataclysmic event, as Hélène imagines the nature - the waves of vegetation taking over the human civilization, which reminded me of a ferocity and fluidity of many nature themed Miyazaki films.

As the ghost of Manon and Hélène's younger self push Hélène toward the second chance at participating in the assassination and in turn saving the young man she loves, Death Does Not Exist reverts back to the scene of a crime multiple times, with Hélène being still not sure if her action is the right thing to do.

The philosophical implication of a young idealistic woman in the face of violence and remorse at its center, Death Does Not Exist explores hefty subjects in an intriguing and unique way.

My Winnipeg

Universal Language (2024) - Rankin A missing case of the prize-winning turkey, a mistaken identity and money frozen in ice consist of Matthew Rankin's droll and absurd comedy, Universal Language. The surburbs of snowy, drab Winnipeg as its backdrop, Rankin pays tribute to the world of Abbas Kiarostami, from school kids and their quests to provide for their friend's missing pair of glasses, to the static, wide landscape shots. But unlike Kiarostami's Iranian countryside, we are presented with mundane brutalist architecture of none-discript, baige and grey brick and mortar buildings and highway over-passes of Winnipeg.

Rankin's visual comedy resembles that of Jacques Tati and Roy Andersson. The main characters, played by Rankin (Matthew) and co-writer Pirouz Nemati (Massoud), expressionlessly go about their very specific businesses - one reluctantly returning home by abandoning his city life and government job in Montreal, to see his mother, and the other, acting as a tour guide of made-up mundane history of Winnipeg - "This is a bench and a brief case left by someone who might have been waiting for bus in 1989," "this is Tim Hortons," "this dried up water fountain in an abandoned mall might one day shoot up gaysers once more, one would hope," etc, etc.

The nearsighted boy will get his glasses back, the beauty pageant turkey will be found, the frozen money in ice will be thawed, then put back into the ice in the ground again, the mistaken identity will turn out to be not mistaken at all. Rankin and co, create a deadpan comedy that is not only an ode to Iranian cinema, but a unique cross-cultural netherworld that feels consciously dour and less hipsterly yet familiar. Universal Language is a truly unique comedy that will put a smile on your face.

Unlikable

Hard Truths (2024) - Leigh Like many of Mike Leigh protagonists, Pansy (played by Marianne Jean Baptiste) is not a likable character. She thinks the world is out to get her, so long become bitter and confrontational in any human interactions, both family and strangers. Her contractor husband, Curtley (David Webber) and her slacker, grown up son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) get the brunt of Pansy's fury daily. With years of her abuse while living under the same roof, they have simply given up dealing with her. The only person who is still sympathetic to Pansy is her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) who is a down-to-earth, neighborly hairdresser. To Pansy's discomfort, Chantelle keeps on pushing her to show up for the fifth anniversary of their mother's death.

We know a person like that in real life, you'd think something bad must have happened to her in her early life, because she is so angry and anxious all the time. Not that Hard Truth gives you all the answers as to what happened to Pansy. No, that's not what Leigh is after. He and his collaborators, this time, the great Marianne Jean Baptiste as the lead, dig deeper into prevailing humanity underneath all the bitterness and hate. And it's a sight to see. Pansy is a very hard to like character. But by the end, we see a glimpse of her humanity peeking through here and there, that not all is lost. And with Curtley, despite his hurting back and Moses finding friends in unexpected places, that they are going to be all right.

Marianne Jean Baptiste deserves all the accolades for this performance. By far the best performance by any actor I've seen in a while.

Escaping Time

Le cinquième plan de La Jetée (2024) - Cabrera Chris Marker's photo roman La Jetée is regarded as one of the best and most influential Sci-Fi films ever made. Made in 1962, just as Algeria was declaring its independence from France, the film reflects on the colonialism and history repeating itself. The premise of The Fifth Shot of La Jetée is an intriguing one. Henri, a cousin of Dominique Cabrera the director, recognized himself and his parents in Marker's film, the still of a family, back to the camera, looking at the planes landing from the balcony of the Orly airport. The boy is the one who witnesses his own death. In those days, watching planes taking off and landing was a family pastime activity, and because of that, Marker was able to capture many candid shots for the film. The Fifth Shot is a cinematic detective story and how we, as an audience, have a claim in telling these stories in cinema.

As Cabrera digs through the archives and interviews with people from Marker's inner circle and her own family, it becomes very plausible that the shot is of Henri and his parents. Also, interesting coincidences come to life: Henri, like most Cabreras who were French citizens living in Algeria grew up in the same town as the actor, Davos Hanish, who played the main character in La Jetée. And Henri's mother had gone out with a Hanish boy, according to an old relative. And their resemblance is remarkable.

Cabrera weaves intriguing stories around Marker, who was a very private man, and his work, along with her family history and French colonial past. She reflects on how history repeat itself that we are all slaves to time. The Fifth Shot is a great contemplation on our relationship to cinema.

Marriage Counselor

Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer (2024) - Karaçelik Keane (John Magaro, First Cow) is a struggling writer who has been toiling on a book about a love story set in prehistoric time, for the last 4 years. His somewhat successful previous book was about Mongolians, which he had no knowledge about, just like the Cro-Magnons and Neandertals. His publisher is not crazy about the concept. It's not sexy enough - Keane should write about what he knows, he suggests. It is pretty obvious that his interior designer wife Suzie (Britt Lower, Severance) is not happy with having been a sole bread-winner of the house, and can't stand listening to his idiotic idea for the book that he will never finish, at dinner parties with friends. Her glacial expression and silence speaks volumes. She wants a divorce.

Everything changes when Keane is approached by Kollmick (Steve Buscemi), who says he's a fan and seems to know a lot about the author, at a bar. Kollmick has a proposition - 'write about a serial killer and I will tell you everything I know about serial killers.' Because he himself is a retired serial killer. He will show Keane the ropes. But after getting caught by Suzie, sneaking into the house in the middle of the night with Kollmick, Keane tells Suzie that Kollmick is a marriage counselor. So starts an unusual, funny dark comedy with the incredibly long title: Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer.

Suzie is not convinced that Kollmick is what he says he is. His method- bringing his stuffed dead cat with a doll's arm and telling the couple to talk to each other while looking only at the cat, doesn't really help to quell Suzie's suspicions. Also, she is suspecting that Keane is trying to kill her, based on all the books he's been reading - about serial killers and poisoning, which were given to him by Kollmick. But strangely, the counselling sessions, however unorthodox they seem, are proving to be helpful in their marriage.

Kollmick's idea- kidnapping Keane's publisher to get first-hand experience of the serial killer's process, doesn't sit well with Keane even with Kollmick's assurance- "He will understand, if it's for a sexy bestseller." But the plan, involving an Albanian gun dealer and a bottle of chloroform, doesn't go the way they expected, of course. To make matters worse, Suzie is on their trail, watching all the absurd situations that Keane and Kollmick find themselves in.

Psycho Therapy plays out like a dark indie noir comedy from the 90s, which we don't see often nowadays. Tolga Karaçelik's writing is brimming with absurdist humor and keeping unnecessary expositions to a minimum. With his-high pitched cracking voice, John Magaro is perfect for a bumbling poseur writer. Britt Lower's glacial Suzie with killer instincts had me cackling. Buscemi, who executive produced the film, chews up the scenes with that disdainful stare he is known for. The film ends abruptly, but rightfully after the night of kidnapping(s) gone wrong, where true natures of the couple are revealed. Psycho Therapy is a wildly entertaining black comedy with a pitch perfect cast.

Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write about a Serial Killer will be in New York Theaters on April 4th with a Theatrical Expansion and On Demand April 11.

Elevated Pinku Movie

Love Hotel (1985) - Sômai Sômai Shinji , known for his idiosyncratic, delicate coming-of-age films, such as Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981), P.P. Rider (1983), Typhoon Club (1985) and Moving (1989), recently had his work re-evaluated and subsequently restored, then released in physical media and in theaters, thanks largely to a recent retrospective of his work, Rites of Passage: The films of Shinji Sômai at Japan Society here in New York. With plenty of admirers in contemporary Japanese directors (Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kurosawa Kiyoshi among them), Sômai is now regarded as the unsung hero of 1980's Japanese cinema.

Cinema Guild, which has released the 4K restored version of Typhoon Club on disc, and Moving in theaters, is set to release the restored version of Sômai's foray into pinku genre, Love Hotel- the only Roman Porno film he ever directed for Nikkatsu Studio. And the film, besides the obvious sex scenes and nudity that are required in pinku genre, retains all the Sômai signatures and that's what makes Love Hotel rise beyond its genre trappings.

Love Hotel tells a story of two broken people and their fateful encounter. Muraki (Terada Midori), a small-time publisher owing money to yakuza loan sharks, finds his wife having sex with one of the yakuza men, while others look on, when he comes back to his squalid office. And by the looks of it, she is enjoying it. He decides to end it all.

Muraki goes to the eponymous hotel room of the title written in green neon light on the wall. With dark glasses on, he waits for a prostitute he hired from the escort service. Unsuspecting Nami (Hayami Noriko) shows up for some fun. Muraki attacks Nami, violently ripping her clothes off with a knife with an intention to kill her and then off himself as well. But it's the expression on her face- agony and extacy, that changes his mind.

Two years later, Muraki is a cab driver and Nami works at a fashion designer agency. Still reeling from his destitution and guilt, he wants to reconnect with Nami, after he spots her on the street. She on the other hand, while keeping her past life secret, is carrying out unhappy affairs with a married man (her boss).

Muraki gives Nami, who doesn’t recognize him, a ride to the Yokohama pier. She is going there to commit suicide. But he prevents her attempt at the pier and confesses his past transgression. At first, paranoid Nami suspects Muraki of blackmailing her about her past. But soon she sees his sincerity that there is no ulterior motive in his actions and learns to trust him. As they grow closer, she feels understood and loved. Now they try to finish what they started, at the same love hotel where they first met.

Sômai elevates the typical pinku melodrama premise into a heartfelt tale of two sad, lost souls in need of salvation in each other’s company. His signature long takes are there, so are his always moving crane shots. Also present are neon and rain soaked cramped tokyo interiors and lonely, empty liminal urban spaces at night. Accompanied by sultry pop ballads, with strong, natural performances by both Hayami and Terada, Love Hotel sits comfortably along the echelon of Sômai's impressive filmography.

Love Hotel opens 4/4 at Metrograph, NYC.