Rebel, Jiro’s Love

Rebel, Jiro’s love is the second film by a film maker who has made four films in very little time and all four can be seen at this festival. The title role of Jiro is played by Uchibori Yoshiyuki, who also acts in other films by Ishii, such as Girl Sparks. Ishii seems to have found a new group of actors you don’t see in other Japanese films.
Jiro is a chubby and clumsy young man who is very unhappy about his appearance. He has difficulty finding his feet and it is certainly beyond his ability to find a girlfriend. At a certain point he falls in love with the factory girl Rinko. She moves in with Jiro because of his affection and innocence. He allows himself to be treated by Rinko as a kind of pet, but at least he’s happy. Unfortunately that happiness will not last long. When Jiro Adams to find the corpse of a murdered woman, his life gets out of balance. He wasn’t able to cope with modern life and now everything only get worse.
The films of Ishii are characterised by a bizarre, dry and occasionally very direct humour. A man is standing in the middle of a meadow singing and someone walks across the same meadow in a kind of space suit. That’s possible in the films of Ishii, who shows the strangest things without batting an eyelid – an apparently nonchalant approach to filming that is in fact very original. (GjZ)

• 

•