Toying with oral history and narrative art, Kitano Takeshi’s Dolls begins with a lovely but disconcertingly long Bunrako performance about the difficult romance between a man and a woman. These dolls are essentially stand-ins for the hungry and devastated lovers from the three intertwining stories that make up the film proper.
On his wedding day, Matsumoto (Nishijima Hidetoshi) discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Sawako (Kanno Miho), tried to commit suicide after he chose money over love. Guilt-ridden, he reunites with Sawako (who’s now a semi-vegetative state), and together they play the role of “leashed beggars” through the film’s color-coordinated cityscapes and countrysides. In the second story, Hiro (Mihashi Tatsuya), an old yakuza crime boss, returns to a park bench where he once abandoned a girlfriend only to discover that she’s been waiting for him to return for 50 years. And in the third, Haruna (Fukada Kyôko), a cheesy pop star with a fondness for the ocean, is disfigured in a car accident, and though she’s now self-conscious about her face, it doesn’t stop her most devoted fans from wanting to get close to her.
These three stories all deal with fame, success, and everlasting love to varying degrees of success, connected by elaborate splashes of color and the occasional crisscrossing characters, none more distracting than a pair of handicapped buddies that recall the comic buffoons from Kurosawa Akira’s The Hidden Fortress and Takeshi’s own underrated Kikujiro. The director’s images are sumptuous and refined, but like the film’s rail-thin narratives and constant cutaways to symbolic memento moris, they’re too precious for their own good.
Because Takeshi undervalues Matsumoto and Sawako’s past together, he makes it difficult for the audience to truly buy them as lovers. Equally problematic is the outmoded sexual roles the men and women seem to play out throughout these stories. These characters are thoroughly modern but behave like ghosts from some kind of ancient Kubuki story. Using art and violence as contrast and moral barometer, Takeshi is great at examining and breaking down cultural and sexual boundaries, but Dolls merely plays out like a work of hegemonic reinforcement.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.