The Mirror (1975)

AKA Зеркало

Directed by
Andrei Tarkovsky        

Writing credits
Aleksandr Misharin
Andrei Tarkovsky
Arseni Tarkovsky (poems)

In a larger context, The Mirror depicts the thoughts and emotions of Alexei (Ignat Daniltsev) and the world surrounding him. The structure of the film is discontinuous and non-chronological, without a conventional plot, and combines childhood memories with newsreel footage. The film switches between three different times, the prewar time, the wartime and the postwar 1960s.

The film starts with Alexei's son Ignat (also played by Ignat Daniltsev) switching on a television set and watching the examination of a stutterer by a physician. In the next scene, set in the countryside in the prewar time, Alexei's mother Maria (Margarita Terekhova) is talking with a passing-by doctor (Anatoli Solonitsyn). The exterior and the interior of the house are shown and a barn on fire. In a dream sequence Maria is washing her hair. Set in the postwar time, in the 1960s Alexei is talking with his mother Maria on the phone, while the interior of a house is shown. Switching to the prewar time, the mother Maria is shown at her work as a proofreader at the printing press. She is worrying about a mistake she may have overlooked, but is comforted by her colleague Lisa (Alla Demidova), who then reduces her to tears with withering criticism.

Back in the postwar time, Alexei quarrels with his wife Natalia (also played by Margarita Terekhova), who has divorced him and is living with his son Ignat. This is followed by scenes from the Spanish Civil War and the ascent of a balloon in the USSR. In the next scene the same apartment is shown, with a strange woman (Tamara Ogorodnikova) sitting in one room. Ignat reads a letter by Alexander Pushkin and receives a telephone call from his father Alexei. Switching to the wartime, Alexei is shown during rifle training, intercut by newsreel footage of the Sino-Soviet border conflict and World War II. In the next scene, the reunion of the children with the father (Oleg Yankovsky) after the end of the war is shown. The film then returns to the quarrel between Alexei and his wife Natalia in the postwar 1960s. Switching to the prewar time, the house and the surrounding countryside are again shown, intercut by a dreamlike sequence showing a levitating mother. The film then switches to the postwar time, showing Alexei on his deathbed. The final scene plays in the prewar time, showing a pregnant mother Maria, intercut by scenes showing Maria young and old (the old Maria is played by Tarkovsky's mother Maria Vishnyakova).

The Mirror draws heavily on Tarkovsky's own childhood. Childhood memories such as the evacuation from Moscow to the countryside during the war, the withdrawn father and his own mother, who worked as a proofreader in a printing press feature prominently in the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072443/

Away with Words (1999)

AKA San tiao ren; Kujaku

Directed by
Christopher Doyle

Writing credits
Christopher Doyle
Tony Rayns

The protagonist is Asano who has had an amazing memory since his youth spent in Okinawa. Words have tangible shapes, tastes and colours for him. This goes so far that he is not even able to forget words once he has heard them. He travels the seas and because 'Hong Kong' feels wonderful, he goes ashore there. He chances upon the Dive Bar, that soon turns out to be the haven of comfort he has been seeking since his youth. The bar is run by the flamboyant, hospitable Kevin, who is also an alcoholic, eclectic lover and a perfect confidant to Asano. But Kevin keeps forgetting all kinds of things and that gets him into trouble sometimes. Words seem only to stand in the way of the relationship between Asano and Kevin...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213469/

Early Summer (1951)

AKA Bakushû

Director:
Yasujirô Ozu

Writers:
Kôgo Noda
Yasujirô Ozu

Noriko (Setsuko Hara), a secretary in Tokyo, lives in the extended Mamiya family at Kamakura, Kanagawa, which includes her parents Shukichi and Shige (Ichirô Sugai and Chieko Higashiyama), her elder doctor brother Koichi (Chishu Ryu), his wife Fumiko (Kuniko Miyake), and their two young sons Minoru (Zen Murase) and Isamu (Isao Shirosawa).

An elderly uncle (Kokuten Kodo) arrives from the provinces to visit Tokyo, and reminds everyone that Noriko is at an age where she should marry. At work, Noriko's boss Satake (Shûji Sano) recommends a match for her involving a forty-year-old friend, Mr Manabe, who is a businessman and an avid golfer. Her other friends are divided into two groups—the married and the unmarried—who tease one another endlessly, with Aya Tamura (Chikage Awashima) her close ally in the unmarried group.

The Mamiya family applies gentle pressure on Noriko to accept the match proposed by Satake. However, when childhood friend Kenkichi Yabe (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi), a doctor widower with a young girl, is posted to Akita, his mother Tami (Haruko Sugimura) impulsively asks Noriko to marry Kenkichi and follow them in their northward resettlement. To Tami's surprise, Noriko agrees. When Noriko reveals her decision to her family, the Mamiya family is quietly devastated. Unable to pressure her into dropping the match, which they think is a poor one owing to Kenkichi's widower status, they have to slowly re-adjust themselves to this decision.

The family now accepts Noriko's choice with quiet resignation and before Noriko moves on, the family has a last photoshoot together. Noriko's parents console themselves that Noriko and Kenkichi will move back to Tokyo in a few years' time, and the family will be reunited. Meanwhile, the parents shall move to a rural region to stay with Noriko's elderly uncle. The movie ends with a shot of a barley field ripening, which signifies the season the film is set in, early summer.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043313/

Dolls (2002)

AKA ドールズ (Dōruzu)

Director:
Takeshi Kitano

Writer:
Takeshi Kitano 

The film features three primary sets of characters, each within their own distinct story:

-A young man (Matsumoto, played by Hidetoshi Nishijima) who rejects his engagement to his fiancée (Sawako, played by Miho Kanno) to marry the daughter of his company's president. When his former fiancée attempts suicide and ends up in a semi-vegetative state, he takes her out of the hospital and they run away.

-Another young man (Nukui, played by Tsutomu Takeshige) is obsessed with the pop-star Haruna (played by Kyoko Fukada); he blinds himself when she is involved in a disfiguring car accident.

-An aged yakuza (Hiro, played by Tatsuya Mihashi), who tries to meet a girlfriend from his youth (played by Chieko Matsubara).

These stories do have some incidental visual cross-over with each other in the film, but are mostly separate. The first story is the one the film centers on. The film leads into it by opening with a performance of Bunraku theatre, and closes with a shot of dolls from the same. The performance is that of "The Courier for Hell" by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, and it alludes to themes that reappear later in the film. Because the rest of the film itself (as Kitano himself has said) can be treated as Bunraku in film form, the film is quite symbolic. In some cases, it is not clear whether a particular scene is meant to be taken literally. The film is also not in strict chronological order, but there is a strong visual emphasis on the changing of the seasons and the bonds of love over the progression of time (Matsumoto and Sawako spend most of the film physically connected by a red rope).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0330229/

Vive L'Amour (1994)

AKA 愛情萬歲 (Aiqing wansui)

Directed by
Ming-liang Tsai

Writing credits
Ming-liang Tsai        
Yi-chun Tsai        
Pi-ying Yang

Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a young salesman, discovers a key to an apartment in its lock and takes it. He soon moves into one of the bedrooms, and one night he attempts to commit suicide by slitting his wrists while lying on the bed.

Meanwhile, Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung) is drinking coffee at a cafe when a beautiful real estate agent, May Lin (Yang Kuei-Mei), sits at the table next to his. Intrigued, he follows her as she walks down the street. Lin catches on and eventually joins him. She leads him to a vacant apartment that she is trying to sell — the same apartment that Hsiao-kang is staying in — and they have sex in one of the bedrooms. Hsiao-kang hears them and stops the bleeding from his wrists.

Ah-jung steals the key to the apartment from Lin and later returns with his belongings. He moves into one of the adjoining bedrooms. That night, he and Hsiao-kang encounter each other in the apartment and have a short argument.

May Lin spends her day trying to sell property. While taking a break, she returns to the apartment when Hsiao-kang and Ah-jung are both there. The two sneak out quietly together and soon form a friendship.

One night, Hsiao-kang goes out for a walk and meets Ah-jung selling dresses on the street. May Lin walks past but does not notice them. Soon, Ah-jung joins her at a food stand and the two return to the apartment and sleep together in the same room as they did the first time. Unbeknownst to them, Hsiao-kang is hiding under the bed as they arrive, and he masturbates as the bed creaks above him.

The next morning, May Lin gets dressed and leaves. Hsiao-kang lies next to the sleeping Ah-jung and kisses him before slowly pulling away. Lin goes to her car but cannot start it and instead walks on a pathway near some construction sites. She then sits down on a bench and starts to cry uncontrollably.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109066/

Landscape in the Mist (1988)

AKA Τοπίο στην ομίχλη (Topio stin omichli)

Directed by
Theodoros Angelopoulos        

Writing credits
Theodoros Angelopoulos
Tonino Guerra        
Thanassis Valtinos

The movie portrays the journey of two children in search of their father who they believe lives in Germany. On the way they meet many people- including a troupe of actors, and encounter dangers. Eventually they cross a river to reach their hoped for destination.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096288/

Visitor Q (2001)

AKA ビジターＱ, Bijitā Kyū

Directed by
Takashi Miike

Written by
Itaru Era

The film's plot is often compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, in which a strange visitor to a wealthy family seduces the maid, the son, the mother, the daughter, and finally the father, before leaving a few days after, subsequently changing their lives.

The film starts off with a question: "Have you ever done it with your Dad?"; the viewer then sees Miki Yamazaki, a young prostitute, trying to persuade her father, Kiyoshi, into having sex with her. Her father is videotaping the scene for a documentary he is preparing on Japanese youths. Once it appears the father is letting himself be persuaded, she tells him the price (50,000 Yen). They have sex, the father ejaculates after a very short time and the disappointed daughter informs him it will be 100,000 Yen now, because of this. The father then realizes the camera has been on all along.

In the next scene, called "Have you ever been hit on the head?", a man (the visitor) hits the father over the head with a rock for no apparent reason.

The film then moves on to a scene titled "Have you ever hit your mom?" In this scene, the mother is working on a jigsaw puzzle, and her hands are shown to have red marks, showing where she was beaten. Her young son, Takuya, comes in and starts throwing things at the already broken apartment walls because he is unhappy with the toothbrush his mother bought him. He then hits his mother with a rug beating stick. Later, bullies from the son's school come to the front of the house and shoot fireworks through the son's bedroom window. The mother is later seen injecting heroin. It does not seem to have a huge effect on her, though, suggesting she is a regular user.

On his way back from work, the father is yet again hit on the head by the same man. They both arrive at the father's home and the mother serves them dinner. The son comes down while they are eating and starts beating the mother again. This does not surprise or bother the father, or the visitor. Later, the father is seen watching one of his old tapes, and it turns out that he was raped by a group of teenagers.

The next day, the father is on his way to work when he sees his son being beaten and robbed by some children from school. He films it from a distance and appears very pleased with the footage.

The mother, meanwhile, is getting ready for work. The viewer discovers her body is covered in marks from where the son has hurt her. She also has a limp.

The father meets with a female co-worker who believes he is going too far in his work. The mother, working as a prostitute, is whipping a customer with a belt (at his request). She then goes to buy some drugs.

When she gets home, she discovers the pieces from her jigsaw have been arranged so as to form a trail through the house and ending at a photograph of her daughter. The visitor is at home and he introduces her to lactation sex (squeezing her nipples to make her lactate, a recurring theme in this film). The son sees this while hiding behind the door.

At dinner, the mother is much happier than usual, and has prepared a nice meal. The son, however, is sullen and throws a bowl of hot soup at her face. The wife—instead of being downtrodden, as usual—comes back with a carving knife and throws it at the head of her son, who dodges just in time. Everyone is very pleased, except the son. However, the father becomes exhilarated when the schoolchildren start attacking his house with fireworks again, which he videotapes. Meanwhile, the mother and the visitor continue to eat peacefully.

Next day, the son is bullied again. The father is taping his son from his car with the visitor and his female co-worker. The co-worker gets fed up with the father and tries to leave. The father follows her on foot and sexually assaults her while the visitor, emotionally neutral, tapes the scene. The father unintentionally chokes his victim to death.

He takes her body back home and puts her in the greenhouse. The visitor is still taping, at the father's instruction. The father sends the visitor to get garbage bags from the mother. But when the visitor asks her for them she takes her clothes off and reveals she is dressed in a garbage bag. She then makes herself lactate and produces a rain of human milk that covers the floor while the visitor watches from underneath an umbrella.

During this time, the husband is drawing on the woman’s body to mark the best places to cut it up so the smaller pieces will fit in the bags. He tapes this for his documentary. Becoming aroused, the father has sex with the dead body. He then notices she is getting wet and is amazed that this is possible for a dead woman. When he brings his hand up, however, it is covered in feces. He then discovers that his penis is stuck inside the corpse due to Rigor mortis. The mother comes out to help and rushes to the shop to buy lots of oils and vinegar. She empties the bottles into the bath with her husband and the corpse. This does not help, though, so she gives him a shot of heroin, which frees him. They are both exhilarated.

The visitor has filmed the whole scene.

Later on, the couple is having fun dismembering the female co-worker's corpse when the son turns up in the front yard with the same children beating him. The parents rush out and with great pleasure they finally kill all the bullies using the axes and knives they were using to cut the co-worker's body to pieces. Later, their son is shown lying on the floor in the puddle of maternal milk. He thanks the visitor for the chaos he brought to their family which helped them become closer than ever.

The visitor leaves the family. Afterwards, finding the prostitute daughter on the street, he hits her in the face with a rock. Beaten and bleeding, she comes back home to the family and finds the father suckling on the mother's breast in the garden. The final shot of the movie is of the daughter suckling on her mother's other breast, symbolizing the return of family order. All scars on the mother have disappeared, as have those on the daughter, shown seconds before (caused by being hit with the rock), suggesting a symbolically healed family.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290329/