VIFF Review: The Matsugane Potshot Affair

I pretty much knew I wouldn't like Yamashita Nobuhiro's latest feature The Matsugane Potshot Affair, since a few weeks ago I turned off his 2005 film Linda, Linda, Linda, 20 mins in. 20 extremely long and tedious minutes in. I was right, although I did last 35 minutes this time before I walked out of the theatre. And I wasn't the first one to leave, a handful of people beat me to it.

The Matsugane Potshot Affair is supposedly chock full of black comedy and has been compared to Fargo. I love black comedy, I love Fargo, but I don't consider feeling up an unconscious victim of a hit and run humorous. Judging from the limited guarded laughter, only a few people in the audience did.

In the 35 minutes I saw of the film, I saw no less than three female characters fully naked, all of them sexually assaulted in some way. Maybe I don't get it. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. It could be that the subtleties of Japanese irony are lost on me. Weird sexual assaults aside, the film was bleak, slow-moving, and had no characters I cared about.

If you like bleak, uncomfortable films peppered with casual misogyny this one's for you.