Pan'ya shuugeki

I recently acquired these two 16mm shorts on Japanese DVD which were re-released in 2001: "A Girl, She Is 100%" (based on the story "...100% no Onna no ko", or "The 100% Perfect Girl") and "Panya Shugeki" ("Attack on the Bakery").

Both take some liberties with Murakami's text ("Panya Shugeki" especially so!) but both are extremely entertaining. Murakami Haruki has never given any director his blessing to film any of his stories or novels, but these lo-fi interpretations are faithful to the spirit of these early stories. Required viewing for any Murakami Haruki fan!

Absurdity is the guiding light in this neatly packaged short as we follow the rather abbreviated exploits of two university students who are driven by teenage angst, exposure to crime films, and misguided militancy to attack a bakery. Running throughout are hilariously dead-pan philosophical musings on the reasons for hunger and particular pairings of bakery fare. The laughable combination of the mundane and the abstract here should appeal to anyone who liked Tampopo. This short can be found on "Cinema 16", a collection of sixteen world short films; if acquired in this way, you can be treated to director Naoto Yamakawa's comments.

The title of Attack on a Bakery makes it sound a little more intense than this short film ends up being, but I guess it also sounds a bit ridiculous, and lives up to that side of things. It's technically a crime/comedy short film, but is pretty keen on being subversive and quirky (using that word in a positive sense, if that's possible, rather than a negative one).

It tells a simple story with a good number of deviations from the expected, and then introduces a few surprisingly lofty ideas at the end before ending in a way that felt abrupt, at least to me. I'm left a little perplexed by Attack on a Bakery as a whole, but it was also a nice way to spend 16 minutes. It gets in, gets out, and doesn't mess around too much as a film (as for the crime in question... it's not quite that simple, but in a way that ends up working... it's hard to explain this one; just watch it!).