Wool 100%

Japanese cinema certainly has a lock on the "weird" genre. Films like Survive Style 5, Tamala: Punk Cat in Space, Party 7 could only be made in Japan, no other country seems to have the ability to let film makers experiment in such ways. Wool 100% is certainly in league with these other films although it could be considered a "women's weird" film.

Two elderly sisters live in a mansion piled to the roof, inside and out, with things they have found in the trash. On one of their daily trash expeditions they come across a pile of brilliant red yarn. They bring it home but that night a strange, wild girl breaks into their house and starts to knit the yarn into a formless sweater. Once finished, the girl screams with an un- natural voice, pulls the sweater apart and starts to knit again. The sisters don't know what to do as the girl refuses to leave and starts to wreck the house. Slowly the girl's presence changes the sisters' attitude to the trash hoard and we start to learn about their past.

The film is quite a bit stranger than the description but that's the basic plot for the first 30 minutes. Well-photographed and with a quirky soundtrack dominated by a baritone saxophone the film has two animated segments as well. The director got her start in animation and the watercolor and crayon animation in the middle of the film shows it. It's an amazing sequence however it's not in the anime tradition.

The film starts to slow down by the last third but it's still wonderful in many ways.