Cutie and the Boxer

Age is a funny thing. Most days I really feel my age, but from outward appearances, most people guess well below my actual years.

As we age, we tend to think of dying and disease. One of the partners in a marriage is usually suffering more than the other. You have to sometimes forget your troubles to tend to the other.

This film is about a married couple who have reached that point in their lives. We see how they see themselves and their partner. Noriko willingly made sacrifices for Ushio, but now she wants to develop her own interests.

The dance between these two artists is fascinating, tender, and sometimes loud, but never boring.

My wife and I have sat through countless biopics about famous artists, and after virtually every one we have the same thought: the movie would have been so much more interesting if it had focused on the artist's life partner instead of the artist. Famous artists in general are a boring bunch -- what's interesting about them is the art they produce. But the people who have to make a life with an artist -- they're the ones whose heads I want to get a peek at.

"Cutie and the Boxer" is a documentary about well-known artist Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. He's 80, she's 60. They live hand-to-mouth in NYC, never sure how they're going to pay their rent from one month to the next. Noriko is incredibly supportive of the self-absorbed Ushio, to the detriment of her own career as an artist. The film is a day-in-the-life story about these two and the dynamic between them. It's a portrait of a marriage that has been wildly successful on the one hand (they're still together and seem to be very much in love) and full of regret on the other (disappointment in themselves for the mess of a son they raised). Noriko teases Ushio constantly about what a jerk he is and how she doesn't know why she puts up with him. Ushio laughs but looks uneasy -- we don't blame him, because Noriko's teasings always seem to built on a foundation of true resentment.

The lives of Ushio and Noriko are about as different from mine as possible, yet the thing that makes "Cutie and the Boxer" so good is its appeal is universal. Anyone who's made a true effort at building a life with a partner should find something to relate to in this film.

Grade: A

"Love is a roarrrr!!" This is the theme which echoes throughout Oscar nominee for best documentary "Cutie and the Boxer"; a movie that undoubtedly nobody has heard of.

More about Cutie than the Boxer: Starting off as an attempt to shine light on artist Ushio Shinorhara, best known for his avant-garde pieces and action paintings from the late 60's to today, where he physically uses everything from his fists to his forehead as a paintbrush, director Zachary Heinzerling lays out an introspective story of this somewhat eccentrically generic artist as he sets up a gallery exhibition. But in an odd twist of fate, Heinzerling inadvertently captures a far more interesting subplot surrounding Shinohara's much younger wife, Noriko, giving audiences a look at the portrait of a strained marriage, filled with alcoholism and regret, where Noriko (a very talented artist herself) lives in her husband's shadow, as she likens her marriage to "two flowers growing in the same pot." Opening with the striking image of an 80 year old Asian man putting on comically large boxing gloves, dipping them into black paint and proceeding to aggressively pummel a white canvas, which stands twice his size, it would be easy to say this is a doc which contains some imagery that commands attention. But more so, "Cutie and the Boxer" contains more intriguing nuances within its character analysis. Especially during the latter portions, where Heinzerling focuses more on Noriko and her hand drawn animations; animations which star a quite liberated female character, who goes by the name "Cutie". During this section of the film "Cutie and the Boxer" takes its purest and most developed form, as these character's true motivations become transparent.

Heinzerling uses the most creative means possible to bring different layers of this story to life and the cinematography is pretty great (the final shot was subtly the most artistic image in the entire film). But although the meat of this worked for me, I never felt as engaged with the subjects or subject matter as I believe Heinzerling would have liked me to.

Final Thought: "Cutie and the Boxer" is honestly a movie that, from the poster alone, I was dreading to have to sit down and watch. Now, was I blown away after I finished this? No. But if you are on Netflix and interested in watching a film regarding a case of female liberation masquerading as an art documentary, then "Cutie and the Boxer" is an interesting enough watch.

I think the purpose of this film is to provide viewers insight on the life of a married couple. The mental and physical strain each partner experiences throughout the marriage. Also I think it was meant to show the life's of struggling artists. I think personally this couple is lacking affection and there actions show it for sure throughout the film. In the beginning of the film I got the feeling that art is what brought them together and toward the end I felt art is what is keeping them together. Watching this film made me appreciate art more.I really enjoyed the significance of the film which felt was the couple it's self.

This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role as her overbearing husband's assistant, Noriko finds an identity of her own.

One might think this film would be about Ushio Shinohara, and in some ways it is. But the focus is really on Noriko, which turns out to be the more powerful story -- the woman who pursued a dream, got pregnant, and spent the next several decades being a wife, mother and babysitter. One gets the impression that without Noriko, there could be no Ushio -- he would have died penniless, drunk in a gutter years earlier.

While not the strongest of the documentary nominees, it is perhaps the most human and deserves some recognition for that. How it lost to "20 Feet From Stardom" is something of a mystery...