The world of Eastern cinematography knows how to surprise on more than one occasion, as I’ll try to point out in this Confessions review. From Korea, China, and Japan comes the most interesting movie of the last ten years; a psychological drama directed by Tetsuya “Kamikaze Girls” Nakashima, based on Kanae Minato’s disturbing novel. However, promoted without due respect and to an incorrect audience outside Asia, many have lost the particular vision of this award winning film.
The film begins with a middle school teacher telling her students how her young daughter has been killed by two boys in the class. Revealing their identities won’t make a difference, because Japanese law protects minors, so she seeks her own revenge. Her actions are reflected in a gruesome spiral involving the boys, in which all the secrets of players in this macabre game will be revealed.
The film’s theme is dear to the East: revenge, although this time applied to children. So after Park Chan-Wook’s The Vengeance Trilogy, we have another attempt (from Japan, this time, rather than South-Korea) to deconstruct this controversial and ambiguous sentiment. Is Confession’s attempt any good? The resulting film is half-decent. Although critics, such as director Michael Mann who declared it ‘High Art’, as well as many public moviegoers define this a masterpiece, there are many parts of this film that pull it far away from this definition.
I would note that Nakashima’s visual directing is phenomenal. Every scene is characterized by brilliant cinematography. Unique sequences of images are realized without the use of computer graphics, using only camera positions and creative editing. The narration, although very slow, has a strange charisma which hunts the viewer and assaults their psyche with brute force. For the first hour of the film the characters speak only. There are no action sequences or adrenaline fighting, only dialogue to pass the time. A dialogue which may cause uneasy sensations in the stomach, the kind that only the greatest psychological thrillers can provide.
The factors to create a masterpiece are all there, but the mannerisms of the film’s vision stop me from defining it as such. Nakashima marks every single sequence with his refined style, which helps to slow down the first part, where the psychology of the main characters and actors are defined. We can follow a linear but extreme narrative, where the subjective passes from person to person, in some cases subject to each other only superficially. This makes it possible to realize what really happened, watching the construction of motivations leading to specific actions. Many confessions, like the title said, try to delve into the souls caught in this absurd revenge.
By mid-point, some viewers can’t believe in the absurdity that is the basis of the project, and the movie risks cascading into a self-parody. It seems too absurd that two children can be so cruel, even more unbelievable that a teacher could enact such heinous plots (such as the HIV blood in the milk at the beginning) without repercussions. The many pieces which come together creating the final story puzzle seem quite unreal. Viewing the film to the end without asking certain questions is impossible. Maybe Nakashima should have focused more on the psychological aspect at the base of the film’s narrative, because the obvious care paid to the visual aspect might well be overshadowing all the rest, which undermines the director’s attempt for a disturbing psychological experience.
The acting is excellent, especially the glacial performance of Takako Matsu, who gives life to a character so determined in her desire of revenge she’s crossing the line between good and evil. Other notable mentions are children’s performances, with a plot objective of the teacher’s vendetta, in which we have the most disturbing scenes of the film. In Confessions, children aren’t the angelic creatures that many other titles have portrayed, exploring if perhaps innocence never existed in the first place. Questions arise such as are we cruel because our parents were (voluntarily or involuntarily) cruel to us, too? The fact is, however good one’s initial intentions and poetic idea, not everything goes smoothly as the authors would like.
Overall, these points didn’t make a bad film, but definitely a movie that is best taken in small doses.
