At the beginning of the film the viewer is introduced to Won Young a spacey young woman with extraordinarily long hair who lives with her boyfriend Su who is a barber and who owns his own shop which also serves as the young couple's home. They live a simple life with little luxury, but their relationship seems to be warm enough.

Their humdrum lives, however, are soon disturbed when Byong Ho arrives. Byong Ho has just finished his obligatory military service, and having nowhere else to go, decides to stay at Su's home. Su is not pleased with this, but he allows Byong Ho, who he has known since childhood, to stay at his home because Byong Ho states that he will soon be leaving on a ship to work.

Won Young soon becomes fascinated with Byong Ho because he promises to plant her trees on top of the barbershop and take her sailing. Simple requests, or not so simple ones, that Su had always shrugged off. It is obvious from the start that Byong Ho is trying to wedge his way into Su and Won Young's relationship which he does with little care for the damage that he causes.

This is a sad film. Su is impotent so sex between himself and Won Young is limited to the oral variety, which is depicted in graphic detail. Byong Ho takes advantage of this fact and rapes Won Young who, instead of telling Su, some how begins to derive feelings for her rapist and they begin to have numerous liaisons.

Although the viewer does feel sympathy for Su, the character I truly feel for is Won Young. Won Young is a delivery girl who not only has to put up with rude customers, but who also has to suffer the torments of her fellow workers who either yell at hr for being slow or simply ridicule her and continuously call her "bitch."

This a definitely a good film, but its content matter and pure cruelty makes it hard for me to call it a favorite, but it will definitely stay with you for a long time.

The film begins with a performance of Bunraku, Japanese puppetry. Although the performance is lovely, one wonders what does it actully have to do with the film? This becomes evident when Matsumoto is introduced. Matsumoto is a low ranking salaryman, but one who has a great opportunity to get his foot into the world of Japanese business when his boss asks him to marry his daughter. The girl seems pleased, The girl's parents seem pleased, and Matsumoto's parents are overjoyed because the marriage would equal higher social status not only for their son, but them also. However, there is one major problem: Matsumoto is already engaged and in love to the cute Sawako. However, because of familial pressures, Matsumoto concedes to marry the boss's daughter. As a result, Sawako attempts to commit suicide.

However, Sawako survives her suicide attempt, but is left in a near vegetable state. She does not speak much, and when she does it is usually to inanimate objects. She also has the tendency to wander off, which Matsumoto tries to remedy with by tieing her to a red string which he also ties around his waist. At first they are quite sedentary , but soon they begin wandering the country, eventually dressed in the robes resembling those of Burraku puppets.

The movie does not only center around Matsumoto and Sawako. There is also an old yakua boss, who returns after 30 years to find that the girl he once loved still returns every saturday to a bench in the park to bring him lunch. There is also the sad case of a pop idol who maimed her face in an accident, and the fan who loves her regardless, even going to the extreme to prove his devotion.

Dolls is a fantastic film. Very slow paced, but extraordinarily rich in scenery and subdued emotion. The camera work is lovely, and Japan's changing seasons are given full attention. Autumn's maples are truly fabulous.

At the beginning of the film the viewer learns that a Japanese suicide cult, the Ark of Truth, recently poisoned a community's water supply which lead to the deaths of over 120 people and the injury of over 8000. However, instead of meeting individuals who had family members who died from the attack or individuals hurt by the virus themselves, we are introduced to four people, three men and one woman, whose family members were the actual perpertrators. The perpetrators were killed and incinerated by their fellow member of the Ark of Truth after they poisoned the water supply.

Every year on the anniversary of the attack, these four individuals meet and pay their respects to their dead loved ones at a dock near the former home of the cult members. Also visiting the site is a man who was a member of the Ark of Truth, played by a very taciturn Asano Tadanobu, but who had run away before the poisoning. However, instead of a brief trip, the four friends are forced to stay at the old residence of the Ark members when theit vehicles are stolen. What follows are sad flasbacks of the foursome's loved ones cutting themselves off from their familes to join the Ark of Truth, and the former member's stories of the contentment the perpetrators found in their new religion, even if that religion asked them to kill the "unsaved".

This film will be much more poignant to individuals familiar with Asahara Shoko and the Aum Shinrikyou, the doomsday cult that bombed the Tokyo subways on March 20, 1995. The film goes into the motivations of why people join groups like the Ark of Truth,i.e. Aum, and it shows the suffering of family and friends who lose their loved ones to these groups.

As with "Afterlife" there is no soundtrack and the camera work is very dark. A good, but slow film.

The kids attending the all boys Asahi High School would basically be considered the dregs of Japanese society. The school is rundown and the teachers teach such a drypan, apathetic manner that it is not suprising that the kids could care less. The only teacher who seems to actually care about any of his students is a dwarf who waters the flowers on the school grounds all day.

However, although the teaching might be unstructured, there is a rigid code of hierarchy enforced by the tough kids. A leader is chosen by a suicidal ritual in which a student claps his hands as many times as possible while falling backwards. After he claps a certain amount of times, he grabs the guardrail. Miss the guardrail, instant pancake.

At the beginning of this film, after the "graduation" of the senior class, Kujo, played by the extraordinarily handsome Matsuda Ryuhei, wins the contest. Kujo is a bit indifferent to his new found power, but goes along with it because he has the support of his friends: Aoki, Yukio, Yoshimura, and Kimura.

Although many of the students are not satisfied with the way their lives are shaping, they seem to basically concede that good jobs and college are not in their future and that they are either on the track to become either a menial laborer or a member of the Yakuza.

"Blue Spring" is an interesting film that depicts individuals who are not on the "normal road of becoming a good Japanese citizen": i.e. Graduation, wor, stable family. It shows the dregs, but the dregs also show that social heirarchy exists from the lowest to the highest.

I think that the film is quite well done. The filming is dark, but it fits the atmosphere of the film. The soundtrack is excellent.