French Dressing is the eagerly awaited début of Saito Hisashi, who recently worked mainly as scriptwriter and caught the attention with several short films he produced himself.Mayumi is pestered at school. He is narcoleptic, someone with a chronic sleep problem. One day he decides impulsively to commit suicide and climbs on the school roof. One of the teachers, Murai, is also on the roof. The film suggests a rape scene. Then Murai says he hopes he has given Mayumi a reason to continue living: hate. Mayumi abandons his plan. On top of that he is now interested in Murai and starts following him. Murai decides to stop teaching. In the meantime, Mayumi meets Marii, the girlfriend of his hated classmates. Then a strange three-cornered relationship develops between Murai, Mayumi and Marii.With its focus on the older secondary-school student, French Dressing joins a small corpus of other contemporary Japanese films on this topic. The film is characterised by a bizarre mood and occasionally bizarre characters. The leading role by Mayumi is played by former model Munehisa Sakurada in his film début.
- Director
- Hisashi Saito
- Premiere
- International premiere
- Country of production
- Japan
- Year
- 1997
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 1998
- Length
- 100'
- Medium
- 35mm
- Language
- Japanese
- Producers
- Tsutomu Tsuchikawa, Shimoda Atsuyuki
- Sales
- Tokuma International
- Screenplay
- Hisashi Saito