Shizuko Yamamoto Movies

Masashi Yamamoto directs this impressionist portrait of the drug-addled riff-raff at the edges of Japanese life. Told in a series of vignettes, the film opens with emaciated beauty Miyuki (Miyuki Iijima) polishing off a hit of crack and murdering her sleeping lover just before going to work. Jonesing during an interminable meeting, she ventures out into the street during lunch break in search of some rock, only to find more than drugs at the hands of a sociopathic pusher. Cut to Yokohama's red light district where big-haired rocker Hide (Yoshiyuki) picks up Chinese-American prostitute Myan (Mia). Though they don't share a language in common, they develop a bond beyond mere rutting. Cut to the story of Cawl (Ali Amed) -- a Pakistani alien with a hair-trigger temper -- he murders his Japanese girlfriend when she refuses his offer of marriage and then dispatches with the shady broker who brought him to Japan when he demands a king's ransom to take him home. Other vignettes include gangland knife fight among lowriders, a Mexican female pro-wrestler's departure from the land of the rising sun, and a junkie who passes out on Tokyo's circular Yamanote train line. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide