Dolls

Kitano's extraordinary new film opens in the traditional bunraku doll theatre: the jouri singer and his shamisen accompanist perform the love tragedy of Chubei, while the same story is acted out on the stage beside them by large puppets. The film proper cross-cuts between three more love-tragedies, set in an only slightly stylised version of present day Japan. While paying a kind of hommage to Chikamatsu, the doll theatre's greatest dramatist, Kitano sets out to create the exact reverse of bunraku: a selection of human emotional disasters as a doll might see them. Matsumoto jilts his lover Sawako to further his career; now he and Sawako roam Japan, despised and taunted, tied together forever by a red silk rope. Former star Haruna shuns the world after an accident leaves her disfigured, but her most devoted fan finds a (terrifying) way to to meet her. And dying Yakuza boss Hiro suddenly remembers the loyal girlfriend he abandoned 30 years ago - and finds her still waiting for him. The stories span the four seasons and cover much of Japan. The tone is distinctively Kitano's, but the structure and primary-colour scheme are new (costumes: Yohji Yamamoto) and the sense of aesthetic adventure is palpable. Tony Rayns