Body Drop Asphalt Thursday (April 12), 8 pm, Bloor Cinema. Rating: NNN
images’ opening-night film doesn’t start off well, but it’s worth sticking with. Director Junko Wada swarms his camera all over the life of an inordinately cute young Japanese woman in withdrawal from the world.
For 20 minutes, Body Drop Asphalt treats us to the the constant, unfolding flicker of a narcissist’s thoughts: “Big toe, 7 centimetres…. I hate to peel my favourite fruit.”
Then the story kicks in. It’s a fantasy of the character’s own making, where she writes a hit novel called Soft Cream Love — it wins Japan’s Mild Literature Award — and her life becomes a dizzy, romantic whirl.
In this world there’s room for fickle passion, space aliens and Tokyo hiphop philosophers. This movie is like a Cibo Matto remix of Bridget Jones’s Diary.
