Tel – Club

Humorous diary film that gradually turns into a fake documentary and ends as an absurd feature. The young Japanese film-maker Murakami Kenji films himself during a family visit and quickly gets bored as hell. His parents have given him a digital video camera to record the birth of their first grandchild, but his dear sister doesn’t want to be filmed and the birth keeps getting delayed. He cycles into the boring Takasaki, looking for some fun. When he passes a recently opened Tel-Club, a commercial dating agency where you can make a date with an unknown partner, he goes inside to try his luck. After this first time, he gets addicted and keeps going back to the telephone club. It isn’t all that easy to make an appointment and if it does work out, heoften sits there waiting in vain. But then a mysterious masked woman appears who wants to play along and who eventually drags the film-maker along in a game he hadn’t even dreamed of…The film follows the vicissitudes of the film-maker strictly chronologically, from the wise motto he finds on the toilet every morning, to the evening date, be it a success or less. Which of the events are documentary and which are fiction is wisely left unknown. (GjZ)