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Kûki Ningyô (2009)

Drama | 125 minutes / 116 minutes (ingekorte versie)
3,51 243 votes

Genre: Drama

Duration: 125 minuten / 116 minuten (ingekorte versie)

Alternative titles: Air Doll / 空気人形

Country: Japan

Directed by: Kore-eda Hirokazu

Stars: Bae Doona, Arata Iura and Itsuji Itao

IMDb score: 6,9 (8.997)

Releasedate: 26 September 2009

Kûki Ningyô plot

"A very human story."

The story of an inflatable doll that develops human feelings. When she discovers the world around her, she quickly falls in love with Junichi, a video store employee. Just when everything seems to be going perfectly, an unexpected twist turns her fragile existence upside down.

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avatar van glimlicht

glimlicht

  • 108 messages
  • 427 votes

They say people with cold hands have warm hearts.

What a beautiful poetic film... I'm still speechless.
Topics such as loneliness, death, naivety and loss are heavenly linked. Nozomi may be made up of air inside, but to me she's one of the best-imagined movie characters I've ever seen. Very well played by Bae Doona.

But not everything revolves around Bae. The director incorporates other tragic stories into the film in a very subtle way. Usually it is guesswork since the persons concerned have very little screen time. I'm referring here to the little girl who ends up putting her doll down with Nozomi. But also the old man who feels just as empty inside as Nozomi. Or the girl who eats herself locked up in the house. All stories about loneliness that connect beautifully to Nozomi's story.

And then the music... I've been hooked on the music of World's End Girlfriend for quite a few years now, and I can say that he knows how a movie should have musical support. Truly phenomenal! The music always came in perfectly, without being too dramatic.

The blow-up sex scene was the best part of the film for me. Also very touching that she then wants to do the same to the other (Junichi) but cuts him open after which he bleeds to death. Then she puts it packed and in the garbage, after all she doesn't know any better. If you can come up with something so beautiful with an inflatable doll, you are a real genius as a director.

My favorite fairy tale.

*5.0

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original

avatar van Black Math

Black Math

  • 5430 messages
  • 1753 votes

My second Koreeda after Wandâfuru Raifu. Years ago I had a bit of trouble with that due to audiovisual austerity, but the penny dropped during the revision. The result is a much greater enthusiasm to see more work by Koreeda.

This movie is different, yet the same. Different from an audiovisual point of view, because it is really beautifully shot, and the soundtrack is also very nice: subtle and serene. Only on two occasions did it look a bit fake: the fruit fluff of the flower at the end, and the air bubbles when it is in the water. However, the shot of her in the water is perhaps the most visually beautiful of the entire film.

The film is the same in terms of the nerve that Koreeda manages to touch. Here too, attention is paid to the small things that make life beautiful, especially in the first hour. But also how difficult it is to find your place in the world and among people, the combination of the pain and the beauty of life as a conscious person. And also for me the old man is the absolute highlight, just like with Wandâfuru Raifu by the way.

There are a lot of movies where a doll comes to life as the main theme. I remember a movie where someone falls in love with a mannequin. It is actually an old theme and is already used by the ancient Greeks in the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. But I still have the feeling that this film is different, the doll in this film serves more of a mirror. It is also said in the film: the difference between a doll and a human is that the latter is ultimately combustible waste. The way this is illustrated in the film is simultaneously gruesome and very poetic. And that poetry is what makes it so beautiful.

I ended up having a bit of trouble with the playing time. I had that the first time with Wandâfuru Raifu. It wouldn't surprise me if a revision will yield more here too, but the initial bet is already higher than at the time with Wandâfuru Raifu: 4*.

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original

avatar van Ferdydurke

Ferdydurke

  • 1353 messages
  • 854 votes

Beautiful.

Fairytale-like, very sharply drawn in word and image. Sometimes a bit willfully poetic, it seems; but if I had initially had my reservations about that Sunday poetry: as the film progresses, Koreeda manages to wrap me in such a way that those reservations disappear completely.

Perhaps also because the directness, the transparency of the mono and dialogues corresponds completely with that of the successive scenes, and is completely in line with the naive logic of Nozomi, in this crystal-clear parable that gradually becomes stronger.

Based, I read, on a manga entitled The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl. That sounds a bit more ambiguous, and actually a lot better, than Air Doll. Of course, an inflatable doll comes to life in this film, and you can tie a few nice poetic and philosophical lines to that; but Kûki Ningyô gets its sharp edge, its poignant depth, by simultaneously offering a view of the opposite, the inversion of that fact.

It is actually remarkable that so little reference is made to that facet, that there is still so clearly injected - sometimes witty, often mercilessly humiliating, but also mildly poetic and understanding in a certain way: the woman as an object of pleasure and a commodity for whether or not lonely men.

There's an entire industry in Japan in which women get paid to parade in front of men dressed as waitresses or schoolgirls, or however you like; elsewhere in the world, that fetishism may look different, but it's essentially the same thing.

But this film is emphatically also soul food for lonely hearts, an ode to the value of life, and therefore also has something comforting. In any case, I would like to say that Koreeda – after Maboroshi no Hikari – once again manages to move me deeply.

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original