Air Doll

Japan, 2009. 125 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. With Bae Doo-na, Arata, Itsuji Itao, Joe Odagiri, Masaya Takahashi.

Suitable for 18 years and over.

Introduction by John Berra, Nanjing University, Film Studies, Lecturer.

Internationally acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s most surprising work to date is an anti-fairy tale about an air doll that suddenly comes to life in modern, lonesome Tokyo. Korean actress Bae Doo-na, whose roles in such films as Linda Linda Linda and The Host have made her a cult icon, stars as the titular doll, bought by a quiet loner for companionship. Emerging into life, she escapes his hermit’s apartment and seeks out the modern world. What she discovers is a city of isolation, where both men and women have retreated into their own fantasies. Kore-eda deftly turns the material into a melancholy, philosophical exploration of the complexities of love and loss, joy and pain, fantasy and reality. Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (In the Mood for Love; Flowers of Shanghai) gives the pop-gloss of 21st-century life a particularly ethereal, floating-world allure, adding further power to this bittersweet romantic fantasy.

Part of the Globus Film Series: Love Will Tear Us Apart

TICKETS
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