Dolls (Film 2002-ENG SUB)

Dolls is a 2002 Japanese film written, edited and directed by Japanese director Takeshi Kitano. A highly stylized art film, Dolls is part of Kitano's non-crime film oeuvre, like 1991's A Scene at the Sea, and unlike most of his other films, he does not act in it. The film has been praised for its cinematography (Katsumi Yanagishima) and features costumes by Yohji Yamamoto.

The film features three primary sets of characters, each within their own distinct story. 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 on which the film centers. 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).

Cast & Characters:
Miho Kanno as Sawako
Hidetoshi Nishijima as Matsumoto
Tatsuya Mihashi as Hiro, the boss
Kanji Tsuda as young Hiro
Chieko Matsubara as Ryoko, the woman in the park
Yūko Daike as young Ryoko
Kyoko Fukada as Haruna Yamaguchi, the pop star
Tsutomu Takeshige as Nukui, the fan
Kayoko Kishimoto as Haruna's aunt
Ren Osugi as Haruna's manager