Maverick Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa may bear one of the cinema’s great names–through coincidence rather than family–but his mesmerizing, oddball movie thrillers don’t much resemble the violent, epic masterpieces of the late great sensei Akira K.
Kiyoshi K., by contrast, is a rebel, training his somber gaze on the underside of society and the underbelly of our nightmares, on emotional disintegration, psychosis and the weird oozy darkness that lurks beneath the everyday. The ironically titled “Bright Future,” which opens Friday at Facets Cinematheque, is a good, lacerating example. (The Japanese title “Jellyfish Alert” is more appropriate, but, obviously, more commercially risky.) In the movie, a Cannes Film Festival selection, Kurosawa follows the disaffected lives of two young Japanese outsiders, sullen Mamoru (Tadanobu Asano) and hero-worshipping Yuji (Joe Odagiri).
Both work at a utility plant. Both resent both their menial jobs and annoyingly friendly and fatherly boss, Mr. Fujiwara (Takashi Sasano), who makes the horrible mistake of asking them over for dinner. There each apparently decides, independently of each other, to repay Fujiwara’s kindness by killing him. Whether either succeeds and what happens next occupies the movie’s weird, hair-raising last half. But we should mention that the luminous, poisonous saltwater jellyfish Mamoru keeps in his crash pad is the source of the Japanese title and the film’s ruling metaphor.
“Bright Future” wasn’t one of my favorite films at Cannes, but I’ve never been able to shake it, and its last scenes are truly chilling and extraordinary.
Kiyoshi K.–maker of “Pulse,” “Seance” and “The Cure”– is an utterly distinctive and fascinatingly morbid new movie voice. His thrillers are like no others you’ve seen: creepy, rigorous and meanly funny. And “Bright Future,” jellyfish and all, is one of his more memorable: a moody and murderous walk on the wild side. In Japanese, with English subtitles.
“Bright Future” ((star)(star)(star)) plays Fri.-Thur. at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. Call 312-222-4114 or visit www.facets.org/cinematheque. No MPAA rating. Adult. Violence, language, mature themes.Running time: 1:32.
