VISITOR Q
It’s been a busy day for our family man and aspiring documentary filmmaker. He has carefully registered the not very honourable but quite lucrative activities of his runaway daughter. Now he returns home with his newfound friend : the man who assaulted him with a rock. At home his junkie wife allows herself to be beaten up by her son, who’s frustrated by the daily humiliations of his classmates. It doesn’t take long before the visitor has endeared himself to this dysfunctional family. Slowly but surely, he exposes their true personalities. And the more they live out their perversions, the tighter they become as a family. That Japanese daredevil Takashi Miike likes to take risks, we could already witness in The Audition and City of Lost Souls. But only with Visitor Q do we now realise how far he’s prepared to go. Miike reduces his characters to their primal, bestial functions. Luckily, the trials and tribulations of this apocalyptic household are accompanied by the necessary doses of humour, giving you some breathing space when it all becomes too extreme. Miike’s film, which often reminds you of Pasolini’s Theorema, is a real kick in the balls of the politically correct elite and a challenge for adventurous movie buffs.