A Look Back at Four Emerging Master Filmmakers of 2002: Park Chan-wook, Julio Medem, Jacques Audiard, and Miike Takashi

In honor of Park Chan-wook's Donald Westlake adaptation, No Other Choice, I've revived a piece I wrote for SIFF's Reel News about the festival's 2002 quartet of Emerging Masters. Park was joined by Julio Medem, Jacques Audiard, and Miike Takashi. 

I was first introduced to the South Korean filmmaker's work when SIFF programmed Park's third feature, 2000's Joint Security Area, aka JSA, and I've been a fan ever since (SIFF also introduced me to Audiard's work when they programmed his second feature, A Self-Made Hero, in 1997).  

I'm glad Park is still going strong, with eight more features since Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first in a trilogy with Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, though I regret that both Reel News and Emerging Masters are things of the past. (This piece has been lightly revised from the original text.)

THE LATEST CROP: SIFF'S 2002 EMERGING MASTERS 

Each year SIFF selects four directors from around the world who have, within the span of a decade or a handful of films, established themselves as potential cinematic masters. This series celebrates outstanding talents whose films reveal an original vision or point of view and a grasp of craft that sets them apart from the preponderance of filmmakers, clearly establishing them as artists of a high order.

These are directors with the ability to break into the mainstream of American filmgoers' consciousness in the near future. 

Past honorees have included Tom Tykwer (Wintersleepers, Run Lola Run), François Ozon (Under the Sand, 8 Femmes), and Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People).   

PARK CHAN-WOOK

First out of the gate is Park Chan-wook, dubbed a "giant in the Korean movie world" by The Korea Times. Park is the young director and co-writer of powerful political thriller Joint Security Area (Gongdong Gyeongbi Guyeok, SIFF '01), which became the biggest box office hit in South Korea within mere weeks of its release. JSA was also a local Seattle favorite, where it won SIFF's New Director's Showcase Special Jury Award and was a Runner-up for the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Film.  

Although some critics have compared it to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (high praise indeed), the twisty, masterfully shot (in Super 35mm) motion picture reminded this viewer more of John Frankenheimer's iconic Richard Condon adaptation The Manchurian Candidate--but with a greater sense of humor.    

Park was born in Seoul and graduated from Sogang University, a Jesuit institution, with a degree in philosophy.  He also worked as a film critic and started directing in the early-1990s (The Moon is…the Sun's Dream, Trio), but JSA was the first of his films to gain worldwide exposure.  

As The Korea Times notes, "His works have always been about socially neglected people, such as the three heroes in Saminjo (Trio): a struggling saxophone player playing gigs in cheap nightclubs, an uneducated tough guy and a single mother."  

Even before the release of JSA, Park was working on the screenplay for his latest release, riveting crime drama Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (above), which, like JSA, was shot in widescreen and, like Trio, concerns a group of "socially neglected people," and the ways in which their lives intersect. 

Sympathy reunites Park with two favorite actors: Song Kang-ho (Shiri, SIFF ’00, The Foul King, SIFF '01) and Shin Ha-kyun (Save the Green Planet!). He has cited the hard-boiled detective fiction of American writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, and Ernest Hemingway for its inspiration.   

JULIO MEDEM

Like Park, Spain's Julio Medem didn't start out in film--not formally, at any rate--but as a medical student at Basque Country University. While there, however, he wrote about film for a San Sebastian newspaper. 

Medem bridged the gap--some would say gulf--between film criticism and filmmaking by teaching himself cinematography using his father's Super 8 camera and shooting a series of inventive short films in the 1980s before releasing his full-length debut, Vacas (Cows, SIFF '92), in 1991. He was off to an auspicious start. The Basque-set historical fantasia won an award for Best New Director at the 1993 Goyas (the Spanish Academy Awards).  

From his short films to his most recent feature film, Medem has continued to reveal a boundless fascination with fate, romance, and the fine line dividing reality from illusion. 

He has become known and renowned for the sensuality, lyricism, and sophistication of his imagery, inspiring comparisons to such stylistic brothers-in-arms as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude), Carlos Saura (Carmen), Raoul Ruíz (Time Regained), Luis Buñuel (That Obscure Object of Desire), and David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) with a little Emir Kusturica (Underground) thrown into the mix. Empire has described him as a director of "daring intelligence, stylish invention and visual dynamism."

As he explained to The New York Times' Leslie Camhi in 1999, his approach towards each film is largely visual and intuitive: ''When I'm working, if I come up with something that has a very clear and concrete meaning, I almost always put it aside.'' Medem has long been a favorite of SIFF audiences, who have been able to enjoy every one of his films thus far--although The Red Squirrel (La Ardilla Roja, SIFF '94), which was supposed to be part of 1993's slate, was, unfortunately, delayed until the following year--many would probably agree, however, that it was worth the wait. 

His other films include Tierra (Earth, SIFF ’97), nominated for the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, The Lovers of the Arctic Circle (Los Amantes del Circulo Polar, SIFF '99), nominated for a Golden Lion at the 1998 Venice Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the 1999 Goyas, and, his most recent, Sex and Lucia (Lucía y el Sexo), nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Director at the 2002 Goyas.

JACQUES AUDIARD 

France's Jacques Audiard was, essentially, born into the world of film, since his father is screenwriter Michel Audiard (The Night Affair), a favorite dialogue writer of French great Jean Gabin. Michel passed away in 1985.

His son got his start as an editor, playwright, and screenwriter before turning to directing with 1994's acclaimed See How They Fall (Regarde les Hommes Tomber), winner of the Best New Director Award at the 1995 Césars (the French Academy Awards). The intense noir received precious little exposure in the US despite the participation of Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist) and actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz (Amélie).  

Like Audiard, Kassovitz is a second-generation cineaste--his father is writer/director Peter Kassovitz.

It was, in fact, the uncanny resemblance between Trintignant and the elder Kassovitz that led Audiard to again cast the veteran actor in his darkly comic 1996 follow-up, A Self-Made Hero (Un Heros Très Discret, SIFF '97). 

Kassovitz, who made 1995's La Haine, his own well received directorial debut, had already been cast as Resistance "hero" Albert Dehousse; Trintignant was added as the same character in later years. A Self-Made Hero went on to win the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

With his latest film, Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres), Audiard takes a more direct, less stylized approach than that of A Self-Made Hero. The kinetic psychological thriller is marked by impressive performances from Vincent Cassel (Kassovitz's La Haine and The Crimson Rivers, SIFF '01) and Emmanuelle Devos (La Sentinelle, SIFF '93) and concerns the unconventional--and potentially deadly--relationship that develops between an insecure, hearing-impaired secretary and an aggressive, recently-paroled ex-con.  It resulted in another success for Audiard, winning awards at the 2002 Césars for Best Writing, Best Editing, and Best Actress (Devos). Audiard was also nominated for Best Director and Cassel for Best Actor.  

All the while, Audiard has continued to write for other directors, including Tonie Marshall's Venus Beauty Institute (Vénus Beauté, SIFF '00), another multiple-César winner, and Read My Lips looks set to increase Audiard's steadily growing and richly deserved international reputation.    

MIIKE TAKASHI

Last, but certainly not least, is Japan's Miike Takashi, who got his start by assisting legendary director Shohei Imamura (The Eel) in the 1980s. 

Since then, the tireless Miike has directed countless made-for-video and television productions, honing his considerable chops all the way. Starting in the mid-1990s, he has increasingly been at the helm of theatrical features, such as The City of Lost Souls (Hyôryuu-gai), Dead or Alive (Hanzaisha)--which features what must surely be one of the most infamous opening sequences of all time--and Ichi the Killer (Koroshiya 1), among others.  

The word "prolific" often accompanies mention of his name, along with other such colorful words and phrases as "graphic," "hallucinatory," "jaw-dropping," and my personal favorite: "flamboyantly weird," but don't be fooled by that first word.  As Sight & Sound's Tony Rayns, an early champion, has noted, Miike is prolific in the way that Rainer Werner Fassbinder was prolific, if closer in spirit to Joseph H. Lewis. "Almost all of [his films] are interesting and some of them phenomenal," Rayns raved.

The best way to describe Miike, however, is probably the simplest: anything goes. There's literally nothing he won't try.  

As such, he's been compared to everyone from Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter), Takeshi Kitano (Hana-bi), Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), and, yes, even the "Godfather of Gore" himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast). His themes include those associated with Japanese actioners from Suzuki's cult 1960s classics to today--primarily the yakuza and the drug trade--but a surprising number of his films are more than just hyped-up action fare, since he also takes the time to deal with discrimination against foreigners, both non-Asians and non-Japanese Asians, and other more sober topics.  

As for versatile, well, The Happiness of the Katakuris (Katakuri-ke no Kôfuku), just happens to be a family-oriented musical, though one unlikely to be mistaken for The Sound of Music anytime soon, despite the mountain-setting similarity. Zombies, stop-motion animation--Happiness has it all.   

To date, Takashi's most significant cinematic achievement must surely be the artful, if extremely disturbing Audition (Odishon, SIFF ’00), which won the FIPRESCI Award at the 1999 Rotterdam Film Festival "for its narrative freedom, technical mastery of genre and the inventivity [sic] of an important new and prolific director." (That word again!) It's the film that put Miike over the top, as it were, with raves in The New York Times and other major publications. He couldn't have been more pleased. As he exclaimed to BBC Online's David Wood in 2001, "This [success] is something I am very excited by. I like to work hard and to work fast, refining my skills, but to have a film receive such a good response worldwide goes beyond my wildest dreams." 

And, with that, here's to more powerful thrillers, wild dreams, weird nightmares, and other delights from this year's crop of Emerging Masters at SIFF: Park Chan-wook, Julio Medem, Jacques Audiard, and Miike Takashi.

Kathleen Fennessy writes about music and film for Amazon.com, All Music Guide (www.allmusic.com), and The Stranger. She has also contributed to Microsoft Cinemania, Film.com, and The Anchorage Times, among other websites and publications. She has been a SIFF volunteer since 1994. 

No Other Choice plays IMAX theaters for one-night only on Dec 8 and returns for a regular run in Jan. Images from the IMDb (Park Chan-wook with Lee Byung-hun, Shin Ha-kyun, Song Kang-ho, and Lee Yeong-ae on the set of Joint Security Area, Julio Medem and Paz Vega on the set of Sex and Lucía, and Miike Takashi in Hostel), Rotten Tomatoes (Park and Song on the set of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), DVD Talk (Cows), Variety (Jacques Audiard / Courtesy of Shannon Besson), Metacritic (Mathieu Kassovitz in A Self-Made Hero), and Screen Slate (Happiness of the Katakuris).  

The Eurospy Genre Lives Again in Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet's Dazzling, Dizzying Pastiche Reflection in a Dead Diamond

REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND / Reflet dans un Diamant Mort 

(Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet, 2025, Belgium/

Luxembourg/Italy/France, 87 minutes)

Belgian filmmaking couple Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet recreate and recontextualize the imaginative Eurospy films of the 1960s and '70s–with lacings of Italian comic book and Mission: Impossible iconography–in the stylish, fast-moving action thriller Reflection in a Dead Diamond. 

The prototypical version of these films featured rugged men and glamorous women, mod outfits, bold interiors, inscrutable storylines, disorienting dubbing, and swinging scores. Forzani and Cattet's followup to 2017's horror western Let the Corpses Tan revolves around men chasing after diamonds--and each other--and the women who help or hinder their quests…before giving way to something more multi-layered and self-referential.

Over the course of their 24-year career, the duo has mastered the art of the outré assemblage through tactile closeups, multiple exposures, colored gels and filters, animated sequences, bursts of intense violence, and vivid sound design–heavy on the squeaking latex–that conjures up images of Toby Jones feverishly hacking away at produce and other squishy items in Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio. (Fittingly, Strickland voices one of the screams in The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears.) Their fourth feature film is no different. 

Further, most effects appear to be practical, which definitely adds to the appeal. There's a certain weightlessness to computer-generated effects that has always kept me at arm's length; everything in a Forzani-Cattet production, no matter how outlandish, feels palpable and weighty. 

They begin with Diman (Italian actor Fabio Testi, Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere), a retired spy at a hotel café on the Côte d'Azur sipping a cocktail while watching a brunette beauty (Sophie Mousel) soaking up the sun. 

Throughout the film, they intercut closeups of his brown eyes, a signature Sergio Leone move (though Testi doesn't appear to have worked with the spaghetti western pioneer). It's something they've been doing since their 2009 directorial debut, Amer, so it also counts as their signature move. 

When the brunette takes off her bikini top and reclines, the sun catches a certain diamond piercing, something that never appeared in any James Bond movie, even as this one incorporates tropes associated with Sean Connery's iteration of the British spy…and that of his brother Neil, who starred in Alberto De Martino's 1967 Eurospy entry Operation Kid Brother, an inspiration Forzani has described as "very pop, very psychedelic, very fun."

Diman wears a holster and gun under his white suit jacket, a nod to Dirk Bogarde's desperately lonely composer Gustav von Aschenbach (left) in Luchino Visconti's Thomas Mann adaptation Death in Venice, and carries an attaché case filled with spy gizmos, like a silver ring with laser eye that allows him to see through walls and other surfaces. 

When the brunette, a guest at the same luxury hotel, disappears, the septuagenarian ex-spy sets out to solve the mystery. In the film, she appears to leave for a yachting excursion with John (Yannick Renier, Jérémie Renier's older brother), a handsome spy convinced she has information he needs about his client, oil baron Markus Strand (Koen De Bouw, star of the original Belgian Professor T), so he attempts to torture it out of her. 

When that gambit fails, his female associate (Céline Camara) attempts to seduce Strand while wearing a silver grill and a Paco Rabanne-style palette shift with a red jewel in the center that does interesting tricks, like dispatching a ninja crew in a sequence that reminded me of Elia Suleiman's black comedy Divine Intervention in which one Palestinian woman puts five Israeli men in their place. In this case, even the palettes have powers.

John also has one of the fancy rings, which he uses to see through a poker hand--cheater!--suggesting that he's a younger version of Diman, or that Diman is imagining all of these things. John also walks a red carpet, attends a press conference, and re-enacts the torture scene on a movie set, suggesting that his every action is staged and directed. Or that Diman, possibly suffering from dementia, can't tell the difference. Not until the end credits did I clock that John's last name is Diman, so yes, same guy, but that doesn't unlock the intentionally-ambiguous screenplay's every secret.  

In its early stages, the women in the film don't make out too well. 

Instead of the asphyxiating gold paint of Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger, one ends up coated in black oil paint--like one of Yves Klein's cobalt-clad human paintbrushes--and things only get worse from there, though everything is too stylized to qualify as misogynistic, especially once Forzani and Cattet introduce the Satanik-inspired Serpentik (mostly French-Vietnamese choreographer Thi Mai Nguyen, but sometimes Barbara Hellemans, Sylvia Camarda, or other performers), a latex-clad sphinx who obliterates a roomful of manly men with her metal talons, stiletto heels, and hook-filled extensions. 

As Forzani told Anton Bitel in 2020, "When we made our short films, in one… it was a man who was killed, in the other it was a woman. We wanted to be equal in the violence [both laugh], and in the male and female aspect."

Throughout, there's plenty of crushed glass and torn flesh–Amer used sea salt in similar ways–recalling both Lucio Fulci and Miike Takashi, though possibly more inventive than either. And that's just scratching the surface–pun intended–since there's also naked sword-fighting, murder by foosball, comic book panels that come to life, a Black opera singer (singer/actress Kezia Quental) inspired by Diva's Cynthia Hawkins--the filmmakers even include Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez's "La Wally" on the soundtrack--an eye-popping op art carpet, and Maria de Medeiros in platinum blonde hair and deep red lipstick. (Sadly, some critics have conflated Quental, also Black, with Camara, even though the two women don't look much alike.)

Forzani and Cattet have studied their gialli and fumetti neri well. 

Though the films are otherwise quite different--no zombies appear in this one--I'm also fond of Michele Soavi's 1994 fumetti neri adaptation Cemetery Man, which sprung from the pages of Italian comic book author Tiziano Sclavi's 1991 novel Dellamorte Dellamore. Sclavi's work, however, came later, unlike Mario Bava's 1968 Danger: Diabolik, an adaptation of Angela and Luciana Giussani's Diabolik series, to which Reflection in a Dead Diamond pays direct homage.  

Though few lines struck me as funny–not least because Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet prioritize imagery over dialogue–a number of abrupt or unexpected edits made me laugh, even as the actors always play it straight. If they never wink at the audience, the filmmakers and steadfast editor Bernard Beets do just that with their clever juxtapositions, ensuring that things never get too heavy no matter how close they dance to the edge. 

DP Manuel Dacosse, who shot all four of their features, also deserves credit for his stellar work for the duo, in addition to other strong visual stylists, like Lucile Hadžihalilović (Évolution) and François Ozon (Peter von Kant).

For those not tuned to their fantastical, fetishistic frequency, this thing will be a chore–even at 87 minutes–but for the rest: a bloody good time awaits. 

Reflection in a Dead Diamond plays SIFF Film Center on Dec 3 thanks for the fine folks at The Grand Illusion Cinema. Images from JustWatch (a pack of ninjas), the IMDb (poster for The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears), The Gay and Lesbian Review (Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice), Rotten Tomatoes (Fabio Testi), and Melbourne International Film Festival (Céline Camara).

Hope You Like Me: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s Biker Musical Melodrama His Motorbike, Her Island

HIS MOTORBIKE, HER ISLAND / Kare no ōtobai, kanojo no shima 
(Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, 1986, Japan, 90 minutes) 

Welcome to my island 
Hope you like me, you ain't leaving. 
–Caroline Polachek (2023) 

Nobuhiko Ôbayashi, who passed away in 2020 at 82, was one of Japan's foremost antiwar filmmakers, a master of the experimental short film (for both theatrical and advertising purposes), and the go-for-broke genius behind the most bonkers horror-comedy musical ever made–though Miike Takashi's multimedia zom-com Happiness of the Katakuris comes close. 

That's only a sampling of Ôbayashi's many talents, but most people probably know him best for House, aka Hausu, one of the Criterion Collection's crown jewels, to the extent that they've even produced a perennially popular, bright orange, cat-face t-shirt. I doubt we'll see a t-shirt for, say, Au Hasard Balthazar any time soon, but I swear I would wear it if they produced one. 

I'm unaware of any antiwar messaging embedded in His Motorbike, Her Island, his 17th motion picture, but Ôbayashi was an endlessly inventive filmmaker, and I wouldn't put it past him.

Nor is the film thoroughly experimental, though it incorporates avant-garde techniques–freeze frames, jump cuts, varied aspect ratios, and rhythmic shifts from black and white to color. 

(In an archival interview included with the new release, Obayashi acknowledges that he added the cuts simply to get the run time under 90 minutes in order to screen as part of a bill with director/producer Haruki Kadokawa's crime thriller Cabaret.)

All told, it's one of his most accessible efforts, though still unconventional by most any standard, then and now. In Ôbayashi's nouvelle vague-inspired take on the Japanese biker movie, future v-cinema star and Miike favorite Riki Takeuchi (Dead or Alive), in his feature debut, plays Koh Hashimoto, a music student, part-time delivery driver, and motorbike obsessive in Obayashi's native Onomichi. There's a girl in Koh's life, his boss's younger sister, Fuyumi (Noriko Watanabe), but his bike always, always comes first. 

Though screenwriter Ikuo Sekimoto drew from Yoshio Kataoka's 1977 novel, the way Koh consistently refers to his bike as a Kawasaki W3 plays like the handiwork of a man who made thousands of television commercials. 

Koh, in other words, comes across like a pitchman. It's funny, but not in a way that makes him seem like the butt of a filmmaker's joke–though he's a fairly single-minded fellow–and I may be reading more into it than I should, but the fact that it's a Japanese make rather than an American one, like Harley Davidson, feels like home-country pride on Ôbayashi's part, though Japanese biker films do tend to favor Kawasaki, Honda, and Suzuki.

In his opening narration, Koh declares, "My day-to-day life at the time was a complete mess," indicating that the film will recreate past events. He goes on to describe his dreams as "monochrome," a partial explanation for the extensive use of B&W, but not a complete one since Ôbayashi often switches between the two within sequences in a way that seems more stylistic than thematic. He admits as much in the archival interview, explaining that an all-B&W film might have seemed pretentious or nostalgic, so he considered using B&W for past and color for present, but in the end he opted for a more random scheme, much like a B&W manga with the occasional color panel. 

After Kho gets in a scuffle with his boss, Hidemasa (Tomokazu Miura), who insists that he formalize his makeout sessions with Fuyumi, Koh decides he would rather spend time alone with his motorbike, which excites him more, so he visits nearby Iwashi Island where he meets Miyoko (Kiwako Harada, older sister of Tomoyo Harada who appeared in several Ôbayashi films, including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time). She admires his bike and snaps a few pictures. It's a fleeting encounter, but she makes an impression.

When he returns, Kho takes up with Fuyumi again, but without much enthusiasm. 

During a night-time biking excursion, they pass a nude couple on a bike–a possible reference to the cover of Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 album Anywhere. Fuyumi looks shocked, but Koh, inspired, asks her to take off her clothes. This makes her deeply uncomfortable, but she strips down to her lingerie. Later, they have sex, but she cries before and after. Not exactly a great start to a relationship.

On another break that establishes his loner tendencies as much as his unhappiness with Fuyumi, Koh visits a mountain spa, where a nudie cutie catches his eye. When she turns around, he realizes it's Miyoko, aka Miiyo.

She's everything Fuyumi isn't, and he's smitten. She's ebullient, uninhibited, and recalls Jennifer Connelly with her flowing black hair and thick brows. After the bath, he gives her a ride back to the inn where she's staying.

He's finally ready to break up with Fuyumi, which leads to a joust with Hidemasa, a fellow motorbike enthusiast. Kho wins the fight, which Ôbayashi depicts in quick, abstract cuts. Later, he drops by local speakeasy Michikusa to blow off some steam with Ogawa (Ryōichi Takayanagi), his best friend. 

To his surprise, they run into Fuyumi, who sings a sad song from the stage. Ogawa doesn't understand why he would break up with such a sweet girl. "All she knew was crying and cooking," Koh sniffs, and indeed, she cries the entire time before running off the stage. Unlike Koh, the widower in Miike's Audition would have been thrilled to meet such a delicate flower.

Finally single, Koh is thrilled to receive a letter and photographs from Miiyo (they would probably be texting today). During their first phone conversation, he gets out his guitar and sings her a song, the first indication that he's also a songwriter, and the second that this film doubles as a musical. Miiyo invites him to visit her island. "I felt very close to this strange girl," he says in voiceover. 

That night, Koh dines with her and her grandfather (Takahiro Tamura), who admits that he spoiled her, before joining them for the Obon Festival where the islanders sing and dance in traditional garb to honor the dead. 

Back in town with Miiyo, Kho visits Michikusa to find that things have changed. Fuyumi, of all people, is now the house vocalist. No longer dressed in loose, girlish clothing, she wears a fitted red dress and a more sophisticated hairstyle. Miiyo, who shares her interest in singing, goes on stage to perform Koh's song, "Sunshine Girl." (Harada also sings the film's theme song, "Living for Your Love.") Instead of getting jealous, Fuyumi marvels, "She's a great girl." Ôbayashi never explains this shift in confidence, but suggests that the breakup with Koh freed something in her. 

Though he once told Miiyo, "Don't be jealous. You’re no match for S3 horsepower," she was, in fact, jealous, and so, unbeknownst to him, she reached out to Ogawa who helped her to secure a midsize license. Now she can go out riding with Koh, Hidemasa, and his other biker friends. 

Koh doesn't know what to think about this development, and fears she'll get hurt, though she impresses his biker buddies--"She's one of those motorbike prodigies," Hidemasa enthuses, "people like you just don't have the gift"--as she takes one lap after another. She next sets her sights on a 750cc license. 

Though Koh harbors chauvinist tendencies, Miiyo can be reckless. She always wears a helmet, but loves to race around in the rain. Then again, she and Koh live in a damp region. He gets so upset during one excursion, that he slaps her and calls her an idiot. She slaps him back and adds a few punches for good measure. (Fortunately, he only does that once.) "You're gonna die," he laments. Instead, she disappears–taking his bike with her. 

Until that point, Ôbayashi has leaned as heavily on the film's action set pieces as its melodrama, but things don't converge the way that combination might suggest. The film isn't a narrative version, for instance, of Jan and Dean's classic 1963 teen-tragedy single "Dead Man's Curve." 

In her very good commentary track, Samm Deighan explores the 22-year-old Miiyo's death drive, an understandable reaction, though I didn't see it that way. She's such a bright and lively presence that I didn't sense any desire to die, though the scenario isn't worlds away from David Cronenberg's Crash or Julia Ducournau's Titane. It's hardly that extreme, and there's no body horror, but both Koh and Miiyo relate to their bikes in a sexual way, even if Ôbayashi handles this with more PG-rated subtlety than not. 

Not long before Miiyo disappears, for instance, she embraces Koh's bike–in the rain, of course–as if it were a human being or an extension of his body, which isn't too far off the mark (she's also wearing a wet white t-shirt without a bra, bringing yet more sexuality to an-already charged scenario). And when she's racing around, she's in her element to the extent that it's quite possibly a turn-on. If she gets hurt, in other words, it was worth the risk, which isn't the same as wanting to die, though Sekimoto's screenplay suggests that she's going to and that it will have been worth it. 

Someone dies at the end of His Motorbike, Her Island, so it's a tragedy for them, but Koh and Miiyo remain intact, or at least that's how I read things. There's just enough ambiguity to suggest that the final sequence is a daydream or a fantasy, though the film lacks the supernatural phenomena, like possession and time travel, frequently associated with Ôbayashi's work. 

Mostly, the film is a good time with fun characters--initial boorishness aside, Koh can be quite the charmer--and that includes Fuyumi and Ogawa, who also come into their own. Biker movies tend to exclude women, to make them bystanders, or to push them to the front as in 1970's Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss with the immortal Meiko Kaji, but Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's unique take splits the difference. It's only when Koh meets a woman who loves bikes as much as he does that he can truly love another human being. 

It's fitting then that, once reunited with both Miiyo and his bike, a life dominated by monochrome dreams finally springs to full, vibrant color. 

ICYMI, I wrote about another biker movie last year.

His Motorbike, Her Island is out now on a Cult Epics Blu-ray loaded with extras. Beyond the informative commentary track and illuminating interview, the release includes visual essays on the Japanese biker movie and Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's hometown. Images from Hollywood Theatre (Kiwako Harada), The Criterion Collection (House t-shirt), DVD Beaver (Riki Takeuchi), the IMDb (Takeuchi and Harada), The Cinematheque (Noriko Watanabe), an X/Twitter (Tomokazu Miura with Takeuchi and Harada).