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The conscious joke is Hokusai shrunk to pastel installation, the fortuitous one is the parallel release of Point Break. Garbage collectors in jumpsuits bluer than ocean or sky, among them the deaf lad (Claude Maki) who restores a sawed-off surfboard found in the rubbish. (The emblem is a sticker reading "Sink or Swim," replaced later by one reading "Stone Fox.") Taking up the new sport, he stumbles on foam while his sweetheart (Hiroko Oshima) folds his jeans on the shore. There are snickers from fellow athletes, still he perseveres and reaches a local contest, only to leave empty-handed when his name goes unheard. Not Twain's whizzing bombshells but pensive swells for Takeshi Kitano's beach haiku, his gentlest film like a sparkling drink of water. Shallow crests under a pale horizon, cross-legged figures on gray sand, formalist canvases dotted with askew details (a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey sticking out in a gang of youngsters, an off-brand Snoopy doodle gracing a store owner's pencil holder). Folding chairs arranged à la Tati at the tournament, where the play-by-play announcer drones through reams of jargon. "Kicking up spray. He's trimming through the inside. Now he sinks into the wave. I wish him success." A driver's brush with the police is a wink at the director's brutal side, the altercation cuts to the bellicose fellow pacified with his nose bloodied. The placid long shot ruffled by a distant speck riding into the canal, a pair of idlers blinking at the list of competitors: "I can't find my name." "We didn't apply." "Why are we here, then?" Love ebbs and flows for the juveniles and so does life itself, to them an end not far from Kitano's criminals, a note of human impermanence floating in the elemental eternal. The other half of the ideal double-bill is Lynch's The Straight Story. With Sabu Kawahara, Susumu Terajima, Katsuya Koiso, and Tetsu Watanabe.
--- Fernando F. Croce |