R100

Dir: Hitoshi Matsumoto

2013

****

Hitoshi Matsumoto's 2013 film R100 is an orchestra of madness and a story with various different layers that are peeled slowly but beautifully in a colourful and mystifying manner. Takafumi Katayama signs a contract to join the mysterious BDSM club which offers members various dominatrixes, each with their own unique specialty skill, who will essentially attack and humiliate you in public at any given time but usually when you least expect it. The contract lasts for a year but cannot be cancelled under any circumstances. Takafumi's first surprise attack happens in the middle of a restaurant and he is kicked in the face after failing to tell his dominatrix what his favourite section of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 is, much to his glowing satisfaction (Takafumi's face visibly ripples every time he is 'happy' or 'satisfied'). We soon learn that Takafumi's peculiar therapy comes from several resent life hardships he's had to endure but when the dominatrixes start appearing at his place of work, in-front of his child and at his wife's hospital bedside, things get out of hand and he tries to find a way to break away from the contract early to protect his job and his family. It's both funny and shocking in equal measure, think David Fincher's 1997 film The Game but on a concoction of speed and LSD (and in leather). The story and characters get more and more bizarre as the film goes on and the dominatrixes become more and more otherworldly. Like a kinky f**ked up Christmas Carol, Takafumi is visited by The Queen of Voices, who taunts him by imitating his loved ones, The Saliva Queen, who spits at him and 'The Gobbler' who eats him and spits him out. Takafumi is always at the heart of the film, he is our protagonist throughout but at the same time there is something uniquely existential about the character. In this respect it's a lot like David Fincher's Fight Club and the visual direction is also very similar to that of Fincher's early films. The content however, as influenced by 70's exploitation and comedy horrors, is all from the twisted (but quite brilliant) mind of Hitoshi Matsumoto. I'm not sure how but Matsumoto has made a rather innocent feeling film about S&M, dominatrixes and being humiliated. In one scene, Takafumi states that people tend to divide things into two categories, then they decide which group they belong to. It provides them with an identity and a sense of security. At first I thought that this was Hitoshi Matsumoto suggesting an alternative, a third option as it were and after giving it careful thought, I think he's probably right, Takafumi simply finds himself in the middle ground, unable to make that choice when people like him, of his age etc, have generally made it years ago. It is somewhat open to interpretation but there is genuine depth behind the surreal mayhem. Utterly bizarre, visually stunning and incredibly beautiful actually.