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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 2003)
tateuary ? 1 , ?nni J— — [37 F IL M ........ w........ Western audiences tend to associate H i recent Japanese cinema with endear- f f , ing hut unchallenging comedies like mf W Shall We Dance? or over-the-top psycho-killer dramas like Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive. But some of the very best work from that country fits neither of these styles. Gay filmmaker Ryosuke Hashiguchi is not exactly a household name, having made only three features since he began directing in 1993. The Slight Fever of a 20-Year-Old, shot on a shoestring budget in 16 millimeter, and the more ambitious Like Grains of Sand were enor mously successful in Japan hut were mostly rel egated to the gulag of the film festival circuit in the United States. The latter film particularly has been called one of the best of the 1990s for its penetrating portrayal of adolescent gay romance in a society that continues to view homosexuality as an aberration. Hush!, which opens Feb. 21 at Hollywood Theatre, is unlikely to change the directors standing in the West, which is a shame. This masterful exploration of an unusual triangle—a pair of gay lovers and the woman who wants to use one of them to help her have a child— deserves a wide audience. Asako (Reiko Kataoka) is a chain-smoking slacker girl making crowns in a dental office. She has had two abortions, has tried to kill herself and is besieged by a self-centered suitor with whom she has unprotected sex. She meets Katsushiro (Seiichi Tanabe), a partnered hut closety engineer, and decides she likes his eyes enough to ask him to father a child with her—not to get married hut simply to provide the sperm, along with a possible friendship. Katsushiro’s lover, Naoya (Kazuya Taka- ( are plenty of other targets, including an arrogant medical establishment. Nor does the film spare the queer com munity. Gay bar Ryosuke scenes, shot in cinéma Hashiguchi’s vérité style, show a particularly evil queen latest ridiculing Asako as gives only an evil queen can. characters Not everyone will appreciate the film’s nowhere pacing, but attentive to hide viewers will be drawn by G ary M orris into its powerful emo tional spell. Hashi guchi is a master of the long take, and some of hashi), is not pleased the best sequences are with this possibility. He shot uninterrupted, works at a pet shop and, A gay couple consider implantation and the inevitable outcome in Hush! at Hollywood Theatre such as an extended being out, is appalled by quietly brutal con his boyfriend’s apparent interest in a heterosex critique, subtly lambasting the repressive soci frontation between the three principals and ual model of family and children. ety that keeps these characters locked in their Katsushiro’s family. Hashiguchi’s earlier films Adding to the confusion are other memo private anguish. They’re desperate for emotion used amateur actors; here he uses experienced rable characters who float in and out of these hut disconnected from their own and what’s ones, who bloom brilliantly under the camera’s three lives. Asako’s creepy quasi-boyfriend pops happening around them. After a troubling relentless gaze. up at the least opportune times. Katsushiro is encounter among the three main characters, Ultimately, all the film’s spaces—the pet plagued by an unhinged stalker girl himself—a for instance, the two men have to ask them shop, various apartments, Katsushiro’s brother’s pretty lunatic who throws massive fits in public selves—as does the audience—whether she is house—offer no solace. In Hush!, there’s no over this unrequited love. suddenly, inexplicably out of their lives for real refuge—only small clusters of people try Katsushiro’s brother comes to Tokyo, family gcxxJ. Unanswered pleas for love, or even ing to find each other in a cold, uncaring in tow, to try to figure out his life and strange touch, filigree the film. world. j n relationships. And Naoya’s mother, a comical Some of the social critique takes the form fag-hag type, laments with her irritated son of black comedy, with the pampered pooches G a r y M o r r i s is a Portland free-lance writer who that his luck with men is no better than hers. and dizzy housewives of the pet shop—a par spends his spare time at city hall agitating for mosh Hush! is both bittersweet comedy and social ticularly rich locale in this regard. But there pits for the symphony and ballet. Voices carry V o you JAdvertise? C onfluence : W illamette V alley M ixed GALA C horus ct > Custom Designer JAds an d "Photography hy ControCfactor Studios 0c/5 5 1 g I Artistic Director, Ray Elliott AitttlE SPteBttn* (tprinkhi'o show) blot& e fSm m Salem Sat. 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