SF Indiefest Report: Naisu No Mori (aka The Funky Forest, The First Contact) Review

Once again, here is Jungwhan Lah checking in from the SF Indiefest.

There is nothing that can prepare you for the weirdness that is “Naisu No Mori: The First Contact.” It is a work that defies description. Katsuhito Ishii, the co-writer and co-director of the film, is best known on these shores for the animated sequence in “Kill Bill Vol. 1,” as well as the girls + guns movie “Sharkskin Man and Peach Hip Girl” starring Tadanobu Asano. He worked with Asano again in both “Party 7” and “Taste of Tea,” the latter film taking home the Audience Award for Best Film at the SF Indiefest last year. But “Taste of Tea's” observational exploration of family relationships is a far departure from “Naisu No Mori's” non-stop whacked-out insanity. It is now clear that the gigantic disembodied heads and forehead-piercing trains found in “Taste of Tea” were just Ishii's warm-up for the Cronenbergian flesh pods, extended dance numbers, and alien body fluid expulsion that comprise his latest grab-bag of filmic weirdness.

Two men dressed in white argue comically with one another, game show style. During their banter, jarring jump-cuts and fade-to-blacks fragment any sense of cohesion. Meanwhile, in the expanse of space (space being all-white with floating white asteroids), a white blob with blue lights emanating from it changes in size and fires black-sphere projectiles at a girl dressed in a vinyl-black body suit. The girl in question is Mayo Banno, the young actress who played the daughter in “Taste of Tea,” and she is just one of several Ishii regulars who populates this film. As Hataru, she uses her mind to fire ray beams out of her forehead that eliminate the spinning spheres. Apparently, this is how Hataru relieves her boredom (instead of doing her homework), and her fantasy ends with a matter-of-fact declaration regarding studying for school: “Screw it.”

And so begins “Naisu No Mori,” where Ishii and his friends Hajime Ishimine and Shin'ichiro Miki (the other writer-directors) all appear to be saying a collective “Screw it!” to narrative form and sequential structure, not to mention conventional filmmaking presentation and tonal consistency. Rather than a film, this is more like a collaborative project unfolding as a series of shorts, animation, and music / dance performances that shift frequently among alternating groups of characters, who are introduced using intertitles and recurring theme music.
First, there is a high-school-age couple named Notti and Takefumi, who hang out and listen to music, attempt to define their relationship, and discuss the dreams they've had about each other. Then, there are the “Babbling Hot Spring Vixens” who, true to their namesake, talk non-stop about the importance of wearing fake smiles and telling amusing anecdotes to win people over. The three “Unpopular with Women Brothers” appear next. There is Tadanobu Asano, who practices off-key acoustic guitar ballads while his overweight Caucasian younger brother offers one-line feedback and chows down on Snickers bars. In the adjacent room, the eldest brother practices a ridiculous fan dance routine in the hopes of attracting women. The brother segments are mostly played for laughs, but on the whole, the introduction of these various characters and their eccentricities builds upon itself in amusing fashion, and we can clearly see Ishii in “Taste of Tea” mode, finding delight in the unique attributes of his characters at the expense of plot development or progression. After one of the vixens plays ping-pong with one of the brothers, he invites her to a “singles-picnic,” and this forthcoming gathering appears to be the event that the rest of the movie is moving towards.

But then comes Takefumi's dream, which begins with him waking up on a beach at night time. Car headlights shine in his face, gigantic speakers blast out music, and his pseudo-girlfriend Notti is dressed in a winking bird suit and striped tights. “Show me your dancing!” she demands, and what follows is a bizarre 20+ minute music-video-like exhibition with many types of dancers: small girls dressed in red devil suits with blue hearts and braided hair, a giant animated pink woman wearing pasties, and synchronized dancers in matching yellow suits with hats shaped like laced boots. In the midst of their constant dancing, there are gunshots, hair loss, an orange bug chair, voice-overs in Chinese, and Notti giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down depending on how much each dance performance pleases her. By the time the dream ends and a three-minute intermission rolls around, the film has shifted away from idiosyncratic character moments to instead focus more on its science fiction elements that play out like an absurdist ode to David Cronenberg.

The second half of “Naisu No Mori” is like watching Japanese people in school classrooms play with the props from “Videodrome,” “Naked Lunch,” and “eXistenZ.” A series of “Homeroom!!!” segments weave together previously introduced characters with new ones, as they make speeches, goof off, and run a series of bizarre experiments utilizing the aforementioned Cronenbergian devices. These experiments involve fuzzy yellow suits with long penile appendages that need to be pulled. A school girl is asked to stick a fleshy tube into her navel, which she licks before insertion. The tube is connected to an ass-television, whose ejaculating fluids are somehow related to saving the planet of Piko-riko. The class president rubs the ultra-long nose hairs of a parasitic amoeba pod that must be tongue-licked like the reed in an oboe. Miniature men have multiple hanging tentacles that need to be stroked in order to activate them as functional musical instruments. Are you confused and/or disturbed yet? The combination of sexual imagery and flesh-colored alien forms seems to be paying homage to Cronenberg, while at the same time seriously perplexing the viewer by moving away from the character moments found earlier in the film. Each progressive sequence seems like a contest to out-weird the previous one, which is not without its built-in entertainment value, but becomes somewhat questionable as a storytelling method when strung together as a film.

Admittedly, part of the joy one receives from watching a film of this nature is the disoriented feeling of being enveloped by the madcap imagination of the filmmakers involved. When Asano-san practices air-guitar while doubling as a tennis instructor for a girl whose blood is being sucked out of her armpit by a fleshpod that opens up to reveal levitating fluid-spurting midgets…well, what else is there to say really? It's hilarious, it's undoubtedly over-the-top, but is it imaginative genius or tripped-out drivel? Audiences will most likely be divided (as the festival audience appeared to be), and while the actors attack the individual character performances with great gusto, the film is not paced properly, and its two-and-half hour length makes it often feels like it's meandering. Furthermore, the constant fluctuation between super-silliness, time-consuming music numbers, and unexplained sci-fi elements never quite reaches the delicate balance necessary to act as any kind of pay-off. It's more like a mish-mash of strewn-together ingredients that contains portions of brilliance mixed together with portions of tedium. Perhaps it's a testament to the writers that I wanted to spend more time with the primary characters and their odd attributes, or get to watch them interact with one another some more, instead of being treated to another long stretch of dialogue-free musical interludes in the funky forest where costumed DJ's spin monotonous breakbeats that add nothing to the narrative arc.

I haven't seen “Party 7,” which many find to be an incoherent mess; “Naisu No Mori” could certainly be described as such, although that would be an incomplete (if not unfair) assessment. It is a film that, despite its shortcomings, exudes style, energy, and creativity like few other films of late. To be sure, it is not in the same league as Ishii's masterpiece “Taste of Tea,” but it's unique enough to be of interest to those who make an effort to seek out unconventional cinema. If nothing else, this is truly an unconventional work.