German + Rain

Small-scale, realistic looking but actually fairly absurd and supercool comedy. The protagonist is 16-year-old Yoshiko. She is no beauty. She is also not particularly elegant. Not without reason, she’s known as Gorilla Man, named after a figure from a manga comic strip.
Yoshiko no longer goes to school and lives on her own in a derelict cottage. She works for a mean and bossy gardener because he has a nice German kid working for him as an assistant. She wants to be a singer and writes her own songs, but her career is not making much progress.
In order to do something professional with music, Yoshiko gives recorder lessons to three little boys. One of the boys really wants to become a girl. When it becomes apparent that two of her pupils are being abused by a paedophile, Yoshiko decides to take the law into her own hands, but things don’t work out as they should.
The film is shot loosely in a relaxed way and every scene has a cool and clever element. The maker tackles serious subjects such as social alienation and child abuse, but she does so in a crazy and humorous way.
The young German speaks good Japanese, as Gorilla Man also has to agree, and so basically everything figures in this film which in a deceptive way doesn’t look as if much makes sense. That is the magic of talent. The talent of Yokohama Satoko, in this case. (GjZ)