Gozu

By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 22nd Apr 08
Format: DVD
Mood: Make a therapy appointment now

What:
Gozu

When:
Out now

Where:
On DVD from Siren Visual

Watch the opening:
Here

Win:
We have two copies of Gozu to give away. For your chance to win email win@threethousand.com.au with subject line ‘That Yakuza Attack Dog was freaking adorable until...'

There seems to be an unspoken law that says every film festival must feature a new Takashi Miike film. Luckily, he churns out multiple features a year without a care for genre, taste, or traditional three-act structure. This unpredictable output ensures he has his share of misses, but when he hits, he hits hard.

Highlights include 1999’s Audition, which starts as a bland romantic comedy and then, half way through, transforms into something, uh, not for the faint-hearted. (Again, and in bold: not for the faint-hearted.) And 2000’s Dead or Alive is an uber-Yakuza flick – with a must-see first ten minutes – that pushes the envelope of excess to until the logic of the genre falls apart.

Now 2003’s Gozu has finally arrived on DVD, and it’s synopsis-proof. It starts as a quirky gangster film, but quickly shifts into a Lynch-like dream. Conceptual slapstick sits next to body-horror birth sequences. There’s a drooling minotaur, too, and…

You should probably just watch it for yourself. Miike admits it’s only normal things that bother him: “They disturb me more than the violence.”