EXTE Review
It's a tale of two movies with Sion Sono's EXTE. On the one hand there is the movie that revolves around Ren Osugi's Yamazaki, a police morgue janitor with a fetishistic obsession with hair. He caresses it. He fondles it. He films it. He sings songs to it. He cuts it off corpses to mount displays of it at home. And when he comes across the body of a traumatized young woman whose hair continues to grow at a remarkably pace even in death, he steals her, takes her home, dresses her up and dotes upon her. On the other hand, there is the story of Yuko, a twenty year old aspiring hair dresser who takes in her horribly abused niece Mami to protect the child from her mother, Yuko's half sister. So we have demon hair fostered by crazy man and a realistic story of child abuse nestled up beside each other, both story lines taken quite seriously in their own ways, and while they never quite come together into a whole both are quite good in their own right.
Yes, I said demon hair. After many, many years of long black hair serving as a marker of evil female ghosts - spawning an entire sub genre of horror films referred to as hair ghost films - Sono has gone and made a film where the hair itself is the villain. Yamazaki's new lady friend may be dead and gone but her hair is still quite lively and on the prowl for revenge. When the spirit of the dead woman is angered or troubled by flashbacks to her horrific end - she was kidnapped and her organs forcibly harvested - her hair grows and writhes about. When someone treats her hair poorly it lashes out in violent ways, invading flesh, cuts, eyes or any other available orifice and possessing the hair of its new host in turn, always to ghastly effect. And the hair has plenty of opportunity to take offense thanks to Yamazaki's unfortunate habit of selling his new lady friend's trimmings to local hair salons for use as hair extensions. It's not that he wants to kill people with it, it's just that he really loves it and wants to see more people in the world blessed with good hair. Can he help it if the recipients end up dead in bloody fashion? At least they make attractive corpses ...
Running in parallel to Yamazaki's story we have the story of Yuko, as played by Kill Bill and Battle Royale's Chiaki Kuriyama. A pretty, energetic twenty year old with a habit of giving constant narration to her own thoughts and actions and who dreams of one day becoming a top level hair stylist, Yuko has a simple carefree life until one day her elder half sister abandons her young daughter, Mami, on Yuko's doorstep. Initially infuriated at her sister's irresponsibility Yuko's mood quickly turns to concern when she notices Mami's reaction to her initial outburst of anger, her concern turning to a righteous anger when she realizes the young girl is covered with bruises and scars inflicted upon her by her mother.
You should see here the basic flaw of the film - the two story lines conjure up entirely different tones and while the plot lines eventually merge - Yamazaki eventually arriving at the salon where Yuko works, where he is smitten by her superior locks - the film itself never quite unifies. Child abuse just isn't a topic to play about with lightly, particularly not when portrayed so well by the film's child star and the movements from goofy cult film to serious drama are a little bit jarring in places.
That said, Sono's entire cast is excellent and both lines of the film are handled exceptionally well. The relationship between Yuko and Mami rings true while Ren Osugi gives a an absolute mad-genius performance as Yamazaki. The hair effects are plentiful, inventive and remarkably effective, at least a pair of the kill scenes going down as instant classics. While I've never been a particular fan of Sono's EXTE has gone a very long way towards winning me over, flawed though it may be it is remarkably well put together and proves that Sono can handle both serious drama and outright absurdist spectacle with equal ease.
The new Hong Kong DVD is decent though not spectacular. English subtitles are solid and easy to read, the transfer anamorphic in the proper ratio and the sound quality good. The down side is that the transfer is a bit soft with poor contrast, which is a problem when so many of the effects shots revolve around masses of all black hair - the visuals tend to degenerate into indistinguishable black masses from time to time.
