| "Some fantasies should never be fulfilled.” |
| |||||
Man, Woman and the Wall
DVD/APPROX. 84 MINS/2007/JAPAN UNRATED
DVD/APPROX. 84 MINS/2007/JAPAN UNRATED
6
| All written material is © from 2006 to Present at DVD Resurrections. This website is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The opinions which are expressed within these pages are solely those of DVD Resurrections. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Have you ever lived in an apartment with paper thin walls? That is the predicament facing the protagonist of Man, Woman and the Wall, a sexy
Japanese erotic comedy about a man who develops an obsession with his female neighbour, whose sexual exploits he can hear through the thin
wall separating their apartment bedrooms. With a digital video look, the film begins as a variation on the theme of voyeurism posed as far back as
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and indeed prevalent throughout world cinema with Krystof Kiesolwski’s A Short Film About Love.
Although much of the film unfolds as a comedy, there is a dangerous undercurrent of sexual pathology and obsession running through the initial
scenes of this disarming movie: the protagonist begins simply by listening in but is soon so overwhelmed by his attraction to the woman next door
that he is rummaging through her garbage to find out more about her, information he uses to sexually excite himself. But, the film is not one-sided
and indeed constantly inter-cuts between the man and the woman so as to give a developing portrait of their initially independent lives as they
slowly begin to intersect as a result of the man’s pathological obsessions.
In this, the film emerges as a piece of behaviourist observation. Sounds are kept naturalistic and authentic, the absence of a traditional score
contributing to the intense atmosphere sustained here, cleverly worked through the intermingling of the comedic and the pathological. Thus, the
audience is on unsure footing throughout. Sexually explicit, but never X-rated, the film explores the inter-relationship between voyeurism, sexual
desire and sexual fantasy – the protagonist masturbating as he listens to the girl next door having sex with a lover. Nowhere near as intense a
study of pathological obsession as Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, the film nevertheless emerges as a clever study in mounting
obsessive paranoia, owing something even to Francis Coppola’s The Conversation.
Ultimately, however, the film becomes farcical and its humour overwhelms its study in sexual excess, emerging a pleasing light erotic comedy but
little more. Fast-paced, it probes the sexual obsessions underlying a developing friendship and introduces a note of irony in that the more of a
friend the man becomes to the woman the more is there the chance that he will no longer see her as the sexual object of his obsessions. In this,
Man, Woman and a Wall is a clever psychological assessment of sex, friendship and the emotional pressures and imaginative fantasies underlying
the mystique of heterosexual attraction.
Japanese erotic comedy about a man who develops an obsession with his female neighbour, whose sexual exploits he can hear through the thin
wall separating their apartment bedrooms. With a digital video look, the film begins as a variation on the theme of voyeurism posed as far back as
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and indeed prevalent throughout world cinema with Krystof Kiesolwski’s A Short Film About Love.
Although much of the film unfolds as a comedy, there is a dangerous undercurrent of sexual pathology and obsession running through the initial
scenes of this disarming movie: the protagonist begins simply by listening in but is soon so overwhelmed by his attraction to the woman next door
that he is rummaging through her garbage to find out more about her, information he uses to sexually excite himself. But, the film is not one-sided
and indeed constantly inter-cuts between the man and the woman so as to give a developing portrait of their initially independent lives as they
slowly begin to intersect as a result of the man’s pathological obsessions.
In this, the film emerges as a piece of behaviourist observation. Sounds are kept naturalistic and authentic, the absence of a traditional score
contributing to the intense atmosphere sustained here, cleverly worked through the intermingling of the comedic and the pathological. Thus, the
audience is on unsure footing throughout. Sexually explicit, but never X-rated, the film explores the inter-relationship between voyeurism, sexual
desire and sexual fantasy – the protagonist masturbating as he listens to the girl next door having sex with a lover. Nowhere near as intense a
study of pathological obsession as Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, the film nevertheless emerges as a clever study in mounting
obsessive paranoia, owing something even to Francis Coppola’s The Conversation.
Ultimately, however, the film becomes farcical and its humour overwhelms its study in sexual excess, emerging a pleasing light erotic comedy but
little more. Fast-paced, it probes the sexual obsessions underlying a developing friendship and introduces a note of irony in that the more of a
friend the man becomes to the woman the more is there the chance that he will no longer see her as the sexual object of his obsessions. In this,
Man, Woman and a Wall is a clever psychological assessment of sex, friendship and the emotional pressures and imaginative fantasies underlying
the mystique of heterosexual attraction.
| BUY DVD @ AMAZON.COM |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||
| Search Review Database: |