The Gesuidouz

Hanako (Natsuko) has a dream: her horror-themed punk band The Gesuidouz will perform at Glastonbury Festival and that, just like her heroes Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain, she will die at 27. With a year left until her deadline, Hanako makes a desperate appeal with a power drill to her apathetic manager’s cranium, and he offers the band a rural farm in the Japanese countryside where they can buckle down and focus on writing a bonafide hit song that will let them realize their ambition.

Proceeding with a measured but steady momentum that recalls the deadpan humour and vignette structures of an Aki Kaurismäki film (Leningrad Cowboys Go America in particular), this inspiring lo-fi celebration of the creative process hypnotically fixates on the agonizing labour that Hanako and her bandmates exert towards songwriting. It is a little like watching The Rolling Stones recording sessions featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, only the political rhetoric is replaced with punk aphorisms spoken by a dog named John Cage.

Prolifically working on the fringes of Japanese genre cinema for the past decade, writer-director Kenichi Ugana is gradually emerging as one of the country’s most auspicious cult filmmakers and, with The Gesuidouz, his assured direction brings an unflinching sincerity that is well met by his endearing and idiosyncratic ensemble of players. But it is Natsuko’s breakout performance as Hanako that will have your heart in your throat as she belts a sublime anthem that is sure to stir the soul of any Midnighter who lives on a diet of horror movies and punk rock.

PETER KUPLOWKY

Content advisory: themes of suicide; crude content, coarse language