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Vid kid
"Tokyo Eyes" is the strange story of a mysterious young man with a video camera and a gun who puts on blurry glasses and fires inaccurately at strangers.
By ROBIN EISGRAU
Offoffoff.com
"Tokyo Eyes" dovetails twin themes of crime story and young romance
as played out in the streets of the Japanese city that gives the film its
title. In this intricate film, a mysterious young man (played by Shinji
Takeda) who goes by the name "K" prowls around Tokyo with a digital camera
and a gun. When he finds a target, he dons glasses that blur his vision and
fires at his victim, missing every time.
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| | | TOKYO EYES | Written and directed by: Jean-Pierre Limosin.
Cast: Shinji Takeda, Hinano Yoshikawa, Kaori Mizushima, Tetta Sugimoto.
In Japanese with English subtitles.
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The newspapers track his string of
crimes, calling him "four eyes." Hinano (Hinano Yoshikawa), the 17-year-old
sister of the detective who is on the case, spots the unusual
young man on a subway and the next day calls in sick to the beauty parlor
where she works in order to try to find him.
Enlisting the help of her
sympathetic boss and armed with a video camera, she finds K in the backyard
of a building located down a winding street. The chemistry between them is
undeniable and what unfolds is very much like a Japanese interpretation of
Godard's film "Breathless," in which two young lovers under the shadow of crime
play out their romance against the backdrop of a great city. But unlike
"Breathless," where the trouble for the star couple increases as the film
proceeds, things for Hinano and K actually turn sunnier as their love
blooms.
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Takeshi Kitano makes a brief appearance as the gangster who lent K
his gun. There are charming scenes of tenderness between Hinano and K,
expecially when she performs her first haircut on him (after which Takeda
bears a striking resemblance to Depeche Mode's singer Dave Gahan), they
dance on the subway, and he removes a foreign object from her eye with his
tongue.
A lyrical cinematic sonnet on youth and romance, "Tokyo Eyes" will
make you want to fall in love.
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JULY 25, 2001
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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