Kokuhaku

If someone were to confess something to you, how would you react?

After success in the West with Kamikaze Girls and the brilliant Memories of Matsuko, Tetsuya Nakashima returns with his now Oscar nominated Kokuhaku. And an intriguing return it is too. To start, the film feels disjointed and confused, in a fashion typical of the director, with switches between a noisy classroom and a musical number. But quickly the film draws in the audience as the first confession is revealed.

School teacher, Yuko, starts proceedings by opening up to her class about her husband’s contraction of HIV, their subsequent split, and her child’s death; though the film really starts once she reveals that the killer of her daughter lies among her pupils. What follows in an intense narrative, charting how this revelation goes on to affect those involved, resulting in their own confessions and tales of woe.

Never one for conventional techniques and styles, director Nakashima often cuts to slow-motion shots during the main confessions, before quickly moving to a mini-music video-style sequence, as in Memories of Mastuko. These well-paced shots (in high definition) give an intensity to the stories being told, breathing life to the words as they are spoken. Kokuhaku becomes a truly psychological piece from here on in, being both disturbing in visual and narrative, delving into the minds of the characters in a way reminiscent of All about Lily Chou-Chou, painting a worrying picture of today’s world.

If someone did you wrong, how would you react? This is the real strength of Kokuhaku: Leaving the viewer unsure as to how to take what is put before them. Should one sympathise, empathise or simply despise those involved? Each capable of wrong doing, yet similarly victims themselves, those confessing put forward their defence for their actions that they know will hard others, with good performances all round from the cast. If the film fails, it’s in that as more confessions are revealed, the more outrageous they become, gradually detracting from the intense impact they have at the start.

An eye for an eye; vengeance is Mine; Kokuhaku is a film that will leave you unsure as to whether to laugh or cry...I must confess, I don’t know which