Visitor Q

Following an extremely disfunctional family, who do anything from prostitution to necrophilia, the audience is in for a bit of a shock. Somehow it's decently made and believable thanks to the raw actors performances. I have no idea how someone writes a script like this, gets it funded for production and finds actors to bring it to life. So strange, but far from fantasy.

I rented Visitor Q on DVD because I've seen Takashi Miike's name in the newspapers recently. I wanted to get a taste of what this guy was about before I saw any of his new movies. And you know what? When it comes to the criminally insane, Takashi Miike is KING!

Visitor Q is not something that i was ready for. At the very base, it is the story of a dysfunctional family trying to come together. But on the surface, I couldn't even begin to explain how INSANE this movie is.

I know I liked it because I was glued from beginning to end, and I was severely punished and rewarded at the same time.

This movie probably contains 5-10 fetishes in it, none of them which excite me in the least. However, I gathered that this movie was a huge metaphor for the need of a family to stick together and maintain closeness. Hopefully, you'll be able to hold back your vomit to discover this.

A definite 7/10

This was the fourth Miike film I've seen (Audition, Ichi, Gozu...well 5th if you count his short from Three Extremes) and I think this was by far the most bizarre and disturbing. I'm not squeamish or easily affected by movies so it didn't really disturb me but I can see where it would be disturbing to the average viewer. Miike did manage to hit upon almost every taboo in the books. I'll admit that I did feel somewhat dirty because I got turned on by the opening scene...but hey, it's a just a movie.

Overall I think it was a unique take on the reality TV craze and voyeourism in general. While I didn't like it as much as his other movies that I've seen it's definitely worth checking out.

Amazing movie playing around with the idea of reality TV, voyeurism and even the nature of reality itself.

Among all the scenes -- of which there are many many memorable ones -- I thought the one which has the key to the movie is when the father is frantically taping the attack on his house and speaking at the same time and among a frenzy of "reporter-talk" he says,

"What are we supposed to feel?"

The key to the movie is, you are never allowed to know what you are supposed to feel. These days, in movies and TV, we are frequently "told" what to feel. Takashi Miike takes this and pulls the carpet from under all of us. he builds his film around the phenomenon of TV/media, emotion-building, exposing, exploiting... Yet keeps this tension through the movie and does not allow us for a moment to settle in our armchairs, does not for one moment let us get into that comfy zone of being told what to feel.

And hence watching this movie becomes this eerie, stressful process as noted by everyone else. Am i disgusted, indignant, amused, sympathetic, angry, confused? You are never told. You have to go through it on your own. And that is the point.

Visitor Q is hard to deal with, but I think I'd call this a masterpiece. This is an update of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema. It's often compared to Pasolini's Salò because of its shocking content, but, plot-wise, it's virtually a remake of the 1968 film, brilliantly updated and moved to modern Japan. Teorema is not Pasolini's best film, but I do consider it a great one. It is a very simple allegory. Miike expands the concept even further. A family is falling apart, and a stranger whom nobody seems to know moves into their home and starts knocking some sense into them (sometimes literally). There are some truly disturbing things in Visitor Q that few people of sound mind and body will want to sit through. Fortunately, I am not of sound mind or body. If you can take it, the film can be extremely funny, as well. And I think it actually captures something truthful not only about the decay of Japanese culture, but also the rest of the world. It just does this in the most extreme way possible. Most will probably judge that it goes too far. I thought it was amazing.