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Family lewd >> Visitor Q is a freakish melodrama by MATTHEW HAYS
His Audition and Dead or Alive were certainly kinky and often nasty. But with his latest, Visitor Q, Miike goes over the top with bizarre, raunchy and delightfully contrived shocks. The plot is simple, and takes a back seat to the antic details. A Japanese TV show host of a reality-based program begins to get very, very drawn into his show. So much so that he begins to involve his family in the shenanigans. He has the video camera humming, for example, as he mounts and screws his daughter. The other end of the family seems to be in even direr need of therapy. Brother beats mom with a whip, cutting her face and making her beg for mercy. Bro also gets degraded by other schoolchildren, something pop captures on film as it helps boost his ratings. Dad is soon sent over the deep end when he’s humiliated on his own show. Some interviewees on the street turn on him and rip down his pants, shoving his microphone up his bum. This watershed event leads to a downward spiral for dear old dad, who’s soon raping his own daughter for the cameras and strangling her to death. Miike has orchestrated an orgy of shocks here. Visitor Q cranks the volume up to 11 in its opening moments, where it gleefully remains. It’s a brutal assault on the senses, one coming perhaps a bit too soon after last week’s Irréversible (I’m still recovering from that). God, could it be that I’m getting so jaded that obligatory rape scenes, incest necrophilia combos and non-stop degradation just don’t do it for me anymore? Could it be that all of these highly shocking directors have short-circuited my nervous system? Certainly, some of Visitor Q is absurdly humorous. But me? Cripes, I think I’m virtually shocked out. : Visitor Q opens Friday, June 14 |
Kinkiness
is to Japan’s national cinema what existential angst is to Swedish
cinema. If this is indeed true, then auteur Takashi Miike must be one
of Japan’s most potent cultural symbols.