Analife

Analife is moralistic and transgressive, but also not without a grotesque kind of humour and some uplifting cynicism. The story describes how three young Japanese kids fall prey to modern big-city desires, how they eventually end up simultaneously at the proctologist (a doctor specialised in rectal problems), after which they end up in a sublime sci-fi epilogue ‘and then they encounter a BEAR in the forest…’ The three are named A, B and C and speak to us about their obsessions, crimes, loneliness and fears in beautiful monologues dubbed in English. A is apparently normal, but tries to escape from ‘unexplainable numbness’ through a methodology of repeated rape. Traumatised by the suicide of her girlfriend, B starts photographing and digitising decomposing bodies. And C, who thinks his own life is meaningless, looks in rubbish bags for carelessly discarded information about others. ‘All morals are engulfed in the flood of images,’ is the tagline of Goda’s debut. The overwhelming digital form of Analife is a critical reference to mass consumer society: Goda uses a choice selection of techniques to create a hypnotic and effective bombardment of information. And in doing so, this film proves that to make a good film these days you do not need much more than talent, an idea and a little knowledge of computers. (GT)