27
AIR DOLL
A love story that loses steam
by Michael O’Sullivan
A Japanese love story about a guy and his inflatable girlfriend, “Air Doll” sounds like a remake of the 2007 art-house hit “Lars and the Real Girl.” In truth, it’s more like “The Velveteen Rabbit” or “Pi- nocchio,” at least in theme. Here, the blow-up sex doll of the title turns into a real woman. The message — that being loved is what
makes us human — is actually kind of sweet. The delivery of that message (by writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, based on a manga comic book by Yoshiie Goda) is as ponderous as it is disturbing. Filled with joyless sex, peppered with dark and pretentious lines including “Life contains its own absence” and culminating in an act of bizarre, bloody violence, it turns out to be a meandering philosophical treatise on the nature of existence, a smutty meditation on René Descartes — I shag therefore I am — with a splash of J- horror.
At the start of “Air Doll,” the titular heroine, called Nozomi, is just an ordi- nary sex toy. Dressed in her French maid outfit, she sits in silence at the dinner ta- ble while her owner, sad-sack waiter Hi- deo (Itsuji Itao), makes small talk before bedding down with her. One morning af- ter he leaves for work, however, Nozomi, now played by Korean actress Du-na Bae (“The Host”), wakes up to find that she has become flesh and blood. “I found my- self with a heart,” she says. “A heart I was not supposed to have.” Well, not exactly.
She still has seams, and a plug where her belly button should be. And when the
sun shines on her, her shadow is less than completely solid, like a balloon’s. But in almost every other respect, she’s a walk- ing, talking woman. She certainly looks real (except for her lifelike, medical- grade silicone genitalia, which has the ad- vantage of being removable for ease of washing). With her saucerlike eyes and tottering gait, Bae is every inch a living doll. Nozomi strolls around town, eventual- ly landing a job at a video rental store, where she becomes friendly with Junichi (Arata), a co-worker who doesn’t seemed fazed when the new employee springs a leak that has to be repaired with cel- lophane tape. Junichi then reinflates her by mouth, in the film’s one sex scene that is actually, you know, sexy. Junichi squires her to restaurants and to the beach, managing not to barf at her saccharine wonder at the mystery of birthdays, dandelions, the sky and the ocean. Nozomi, it seems, may have found herself with a heart, but like the scare- crow in “The Wizard of Oz,” she doesn’t seem to have much of a brain. No matter. Junichi doesn’t have much of one, either. You might start to wonder whether he’s a mannequin, too. There are moments of real visual po-
etry. And the philosophy is certainly thought-provoking. Is it consciousness that makes us human? Or the conscious- ness of others? And don’t we all end up in the ground anyway, people and sex dolls alike? Among the many mortality-themed subplots is Nozomi’s tender friendship with a sickly old man. But at almost two hours, “Air Doll” feels
waaay too long. It’s a thin, sophomoric premise that in the end falls flat, and the only sound is the hiss of escaping hot air.
osullivanm@washpost.com
Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains nudity, sexual content and brief, bloody violence. In Japanese with English subtitles. 116 minutes.
B½
rivers from 25
noting Rivers’s line of jewelry, books, stand-up dates and TV appearances, including a winning stint on “Celeb- rity Apprentice.” She is also shown working, during the course of the film, on a one-woman play, “Joan Rivers: A Work in Progress by a Life in Prog- ress.” “Joan will turn nothing down,” says her assistant Jocelyn Pickett. That almost pathological compul- sion to work, and its psychological roots, are explored with only a moder- ate degree of success by filmmakers Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg, whose work includes documentaries about genocide in Darfur and a man wrongly convicted of murder. (The filmmakers got access to Rivers be- cause she is a friend of Stern’s mother.) At one point, Rivers shows the cam-
era a blank page in her appointment book, saying, “I’ll show you fear.” But what exactly is she so afraid of? Per- haps the loss of love that being out of the limelight would represent. Rivers has long joked about maternal rejec- tion. And in the end, all comics are damaged, as Rivers’s daughter, Melis- sa, observes.
But Rivers herself never faces the question head-on, except to quip that
“nobody wants me.” That fear of rejec- tion might explain her much pub- licized cosmetic surgery.
“Right now [people] see her as a plastic surgery freak who’s past due,” says her longtime manager, Billy Sam- meth. That surgery has left the comedian
a few steps shy of Michael Jackson in terms of how different she looks from her former self. But she’s not apologet- ic. “You think a man wants an in- telligent woman?” Rivers asks Johnny Carson in an old “Tonight Show” clip. “I never had one put his hand up my skirt looking for a library card.” Rivers, a Barnard College graduate, is obviously intelligent. And her pio- neering work made possible the ca- reers of such female comedians as Kathy Griffin, seen in the film saying as much. But the insecurities that seem to feed Rivers’s often angry hu- mor — and that have left her face look- ing like a mask frozen in horror — are left unexamined.
osullivanm@washpost.com
R. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema and Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains lots of crude humor and dirty language. 84 minutes.
BB
toy story 3 from 25
voiced by Jon Morris.) This is Pixar’s first Imax movie, and
ALSO
OPENING Jonah Hex
Josh Brolin plays a Wild West bounty hunter and Megan Fox his gun-tot- ing love interest in this adventure movie based on the DC Comics char- acter. This movie did not screen in time for review in Weekend. See to- day’s Style section for a full review. PG-13. At area theaters. Contains intense violence, sex and nudity, and profanity. 85 minutes.
JAMIE TRUEBLOOD
it’s also in 3-D. Although the benefits of technical bells and whistles aren’t immediately apparent, the color scheme and bold visual design look terrific, right down to the little details for which fans have come to adore just about anything Pixar sprinkles its magic dust on (like the yoga studio bumper sticker on Andy’s mom’s car, or the way they infuse dull VHS tape with a burnished, nostalgic glow). Cannily, the producers and screen- writer Michael Arndt have set “Toy Story 3” during the week before Andy goes to college, which just about fits the generation of kids who came of age with the first two films, and strongly chimes with the anxieties and bittersweet feelings of their par- ents. The story revolves around fears of abandonment and the inability to let go, with Buzz and Jessie and the gang being sent to a day-care center that winds up being, as one survivor puts it, a place of squalor and despair, “run by an evil bear who smells of strawberries.” That bear, voiced by Ned Beatty, heads up his own gang of left-behinds, including a hilariously vain Ken doll (Michael Keaton) and a terrifying baby doll who does her master’s bid- ding like a battered, once-cute-now- creepy toddler zombie. The toys’ breakout from the day- care center winds up being the ballast of “Toy Story 3,” which takes its cues from “Cool Hand Luke” and assorted
prison-break flicks, and culminates in a scene of near-death, which, after several episodes of darkness and peril, seems gratuitously excessive. But for every tear, a laugh: a new group of toys Woody meets includes a veddy se- rious hedgehog named Mr. Prickle- pants (Timothy Dalton), who ap- proaches pretend tea parties with the thespian seriousness of Daniel Day- Lewis. “We do a lot of improv here,” explains a unicorn named Buttercup (Jeff Garlin). Later, one of the original toy characters undergoes an amusing change in character that leads to “Toy Story 3” being the first of the franchise to need English subtitles. Ultimately, every “Toy Story” movie is about story, not just the film’s plot or narrative, but the stories the char- acters want to be in when Andy plays with them. It’s just this deep sense of longing — inevitably giving way to loss and acceptance — that will bring adult viewers to that Disney-approved point of smiling even as they weep openly. It’s an emotional dissonance Pixar has always been supremely comfort- able with, as “Toy Story 3” once again proves with knowing humor, wildly imaginative visual virtuosity and bit- tersweet rue. Why choose either glee or despair, they insist, when you can have both?
hornadaya@washpost.com
G. At area theaters. Contains some themes that may be frightening for the youngest viewers. 103 minutes.
BBB
THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010
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