It’s a hot day. Perhaps I should not be in the cinema at all. After all, dehydration does not exactly lead to heightened attention, and the choice of a Japanese Yakuza flick might also be dispiriting. Of course I should have noticed the words Takashi Miike at the door and not worried. Gozu is a film coloured by every shade of nuts, and kept me more than entertained for two hours. Baffled, but entertained.
From the opening where a Yakuza Chihuahua gets killed, to the ending where (deep breath) our hero Minami is interrupted whilst having sex with his brother in female form by her literally giving birth to the original male brother, very little makes sense. But it is all presented with such great style, and with ideas at turns ingenious, silly and audacious. Nearest Western example – probably David Lynch. The Minotaur seems significant, and the old woman wantonly expressing milk everywhere is more than a little Lynchian. But Miike is a law unto himself, and when he is having fun like here or in the Happiness Of The Katakuris, the irrepressible innovation papers over the fact that there is next to no plot and certainly no sense involved.
Go see Gozu if you like any of the following:
Skinned human beings
Men being whipped with fly swats
Buckets and buckets of entrails
Dogs being beaten up
Minotaurs
Long sloppy tongues (on minotaur)
Fully grown men being born by women considerably smaller than them
And coming out covered in goo
Blokes in half moon face paint
Men with spoons up their arse