A Japanese Cyberpunk classic courtesy of Shozin Fukui.
by Mike Bracken
If I had to describe the films of Shozin Fukui in a word, that word would be discordant. This is not a criticism – merely an observation on the all-out sonic and visual assault that comprises both of his feature films. Fukui's movies are designed to agitate an audience, to make them uncomfortable, to unsettle them. They are not films for people who like traditional cinema. They are avant garde. They are disturbing. They are graphic. They are philosophically intriguing. Best of all, they're pretty damn brilliant.
Fukui first appeared on the Japanese Cyberpunk scene with his 1991 feature, 964 Pinocchio and then didn't make a second feature until 1997, when he unleashed Rubber's Lover on an unsuspecting world. Rubber's Lover is actually sort of a prequel to 964 Pinocchio, but it's not necessary to see them in chronological order.
Rubber's Lover tells a tale of two scientists: Shimika (Youta Kawase) and Motomiya (Sosuke Saito). The intrepid researchers are working on a project to unleash psychic abilities in human beings – utilizing director Fukui's credo that "psychic power is realized when mental anguish exceeds physical pain." Sounds fun, doesn't it? To achieve their goals, Shimika and Motomiya collect bums, inject them with a mysterious drug known as ether, then hook them up to the Direct Digital Drive – which looks a lot like your standard virtual reality headset. Unfortunately, the bums aren't really up to the task and often die quickly. Sensing that the project is a loss, their benefactor decides to cut their funding and sends his secretary, Kiku (Nao), to shut down the operation. Unfortunately for Kiku, Motomiya isn't having any of that – so he captures her and Shimika and uses them to continue his experiments – with essentially disastrous results. Shimika makes a great subject, and is eventually placed inside a rubber suit (hence the "rubber" part of the title) to cut off any and all external stimuli. It's then that his psychic powers explode.
Filmed in lush black and white (a stylistic choice made solely because Fukui thought the rubber fetish suit looked too silly in color) with intriguing camera angles and a hyper-stylized form of editing, Rubber's Lover rarely resembles a traditional film. Superficially, it seems to share a lot in common with Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man. However, once one gets beneath the surface, the films are really very different. Fukui brings a punk rock aesthetic to the production – from the aural assaults (which remind me a lot of Hank Shocklee and the Bomb Squad's work on early Public Enemy albums) to the ragged editing of sequences, Rubber's Lover is a film created entirely in the way its maker intended – without any thought to commercial success or mainstream sensibilities. It's refreshing to see filmmaking of this type as it stands in stark contrast to our own Hollywood studio system, where mass appeal trumps all.
Yet, because of this, Rubber's Lover will only appeal to a very limited audience. People who feel a film's visual presentation is more important than a traditional plot will love it – in a lot of ways it's a living, breathing painting with a soundtrack. It's also a mindf*** of the first order. Like all good cyberpunk, there are themes at work beneath the surface of the film, but finding them and puzzling out what it all means is the responsibility of the viewer. Fukui will not hold your hand. There will be no denouement where everything is explained. No one will walk off into the sunset with a new life and all of their problems solved. This is provocative filmmaking – and cinema as a symbiotic relationship between the director and the audience. Those who are unwilling to think and meet the film halfway should look elsewhere.
Those looking for a "pleasant" cinematic experience should also look somewhere else. Nothing about Rubber's Lover is pleasant – it's 90-minutes of cinematic assault complete with rape, nudity, gore, jarring visual imagery, torture, music that is only music in the loosest sense of the term, and startling symbolism. It is not the feel good movie of the year. It is not a white-knuckled thrill ride. It is not like anything you've probably ever seen before – and for this reason alone it should be essential viewing for anyone out there looking for something new, different, and weird. Cinema doesn't always have to be safe, and the films of Shozin Fukui prove this time and time again.
Unearthed Films has released Rubber's Lover on DVD (as well as 964 Pinocchio) as part of their new Japanese Cyberpunk line. The disc is excellent. Prior to this release, the only way to see either of these films was through the black market bootleg scene. In the best case scenario, you were treated to a marginal picture with sloppy subtitles. In the worst, you got a marginal picture and no subs at all. Unearthed has remedied that by cleaning up the films to pristine condition and providing new subtitles. The subs have a few grammatical errors, but they don't ever ruin a scene. The prints themselves look great – Rubber's Lover is a bit grainy in spots, but it's to be expected considering the source material. The disc also features a lengthy interview with Fukui (which is excellent) and a short of his entitled Gerorisuto (which takes his fascination with characters vomiting to a whole new level). Kudos to Unearthed for releasing this package – this is a movie that needed a domestic release, particularly in the wake of the cult success of a film like Tetsuo.
If you're reading this far, odds are something about Rubber's Lover intrigues you. It's certainly not for the masses, but if you're a cinema fan with a taste for adventure and one who doesn't mind a film that challenges its audience to actually use the gray matter sitting between their ears, then Rubber's Lover is definitely something that should be on your "must see" list.
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