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Film Review: Milocrorze: A Love Story (2011) by Yoshimasa Ishibashi screening at Fantasia 2020

Mixing genres through a barely coherent narrative and a visual presentation that borders on the epileptic through its use of intense coloring and frequency of cuts has been one of the traits of contemporary Japanese cinema for many years. This kind of productions usually end up in seemingly silly, but also quite rich in context and entertaining films, that also seem to “loan” from other, older movies. Probably the main representative of the style is Tetsuya Nakashima, but other directors, like Mika Ninagawa, have also adopted the approach, while Obayashi's last works also moved towards the same direction. Yoshimasha Ishibashi tries his hand in the style.

Milocrorze: A Love Story” is screening at Fantasia Festival


The story unfolds in four different axes. The first one is set like a children's movie and revolves around a rather colorful boy (literally) named Ovreneli Vreneligare who eventually meets Milocrorze in a park and becomes obsessed with her, as the narrator's voice informs us.

The second focuses on an utterly absurd figure, Besson Kumagai, an Austin Powers-like persona who gives preposterous women advice to young men who call his help line, at least when he is not by his client's phones or not dancing in between the sketches that comprise this part, along with impressive women dressed in bikinis.

The third takes us to the samurai era, where Tamon time-travels to save his beloved Yuri, having to face scores of samurai, yakuza and owners of brothels who want to trick him, in a road-movie style segment that unfolds like a farcical Odyssey.

The last part returns the viewer to Vreneligare's arc, who has now grown up.

The coherence in the film goes away almost from the beginning, with Ishibashi highlighting the fact that his purpose is to impress and entertain his audience, by including as many elements as possible, both in terms of story (and loans from other movies) and presentation. In that fashion, apart from “Austin Powers”, the film touches on “Kamikaze Girls” and “Paco and the Magical Book”, “Millennium Actress”, “Sakuran” and a number of female Yakuza movies of the 70's. The last part, which takes place in the samurai era, is the most impressive and action-packed, with a number of rather well-executed and quite brutal fighting scenes, whose only fault is the extensive use of slow motion.

Through all this mash-up, one could say that Ishibashi wanted to make a comment about love and how it can transcend time, and almost any other concept, but even this aspect is lost in the motley colors and the absurdity of the segments, while the sultriness of the majority of women appearing on screen seems to move on the exact opposite direction.

The technical aspect is, undoubtedly, “Milocrorze's” biggest trait. Katsuharu Oyamada's cinematography implements the ludicrous aesthetics of the film to perfection, particularly through the use of color, and with the help of the excellent work done in costumes (Kyoko Amano and Kouichi Emura), art direction (Ishibashi himself) and visual Effects (Masahiro Teraoka). Ishibashi's own frantic editing intensifies the absurdity, with the same applying to the music of the film.

gives a splendid performance in three roles, with him highlighting his range as the Japanese version of Austin Powers, as a samurai, and lastly as Ovreneli, in a performance that could be easily described as extravagant. Also of note should be the presence of veteran , and even more, 's, in two appearances that definitely add to the “cultness” of the production.

” is definitely silly, but is also hilarious, intense and very entertaining, and a movie that most fans of “different” mainstream cinema can easily enjoy.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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