Confessions
Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima
Japan, 2010
Cornerhouse, 5 March 2011
Still from Confessions
Japan is a foreign country; they do things very differently there.
Certainly, you’ll form this impression if you take Nakashima’s dark, hyperactive film at face value.
Each and every person seems bent on revenge in some form. If they cannot claw to kill, they’ll aim to scratch and maim.
When a school teacher’s daughter is killed by two of her pupils, they escape punishment due to the fact that they’re below the age of criminal responsibility. The school teacher therefore goes after them directly. That’s the story set-up, more or less.
There are some inventive blood splatter moments and a fine instance when time goes backwards then forwards once more, following an explosion. It’s a crazy ride but, as with many of Tarantino’s films, you’re not really engaged enough to find it genuinely disturbing. You can admire it as a work of cinema, mind.
