Photo: Lior Shamriz's Japan Japan
The restless, mini-DV-camera-shot visual style of Lior Shamriz's semi-improvised fiction matches the wanderlust of its twentysomething gay hero, and its mood of displacement enhances the explicit thesis that escaping from your home (or culture) seldom means you can leave it behind. Imri (Imri Kahn), newly out of the army and arriving in Tel Aviv with a vague plan to save up for a sojourn in Japan, counters the boredom of his party-supply shop employment and mild lectures from his suburban mother with cruising, web-surfing, and clubbing; Shamriz fends off any overfamiliarity in the scenario with a riot of split-screens, still photos (detailing a cinema pickup), recurring credit sequences, bukkake videos, Google Earth scrolling, manga art, and an impromptu arm-waving dance to ABBA's "SOS." Bill Weber
The restless, mini-DV-camera-shot visual style of Lior Shamriz's semi-improvised fiction matches the wanderlust of its twentysomething gay hero, and its mood of displacement enhances the explicit thesis that escaping from your home (or culture) seldom means you can leave it behind. Imri (Imri Kahn), newly out of the army and arriving in Tel Aviv with a vague plan to save up for a sojourn in Japan, counters the boredom of his party-supply shop employment and mild lectures from his suburban mother with cruising, web-surfing, and clubbing; Shamriz fends off any overfamiliarity in the scenario with a riot of split-screens, still photos (detailing a cinema pickup), recurring credit sequences, bukkake videos, Google Earth scrolling, manga art, and an impromptu arm-waving dance to ABBA's "SOS." Bill Weber
