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<div>Thanks to everyone for the recommendations on the theme of
"sub/urban alienation." We ended up going with<i> A
Scene at the Sea</i> (Kitano, 1991) and<i> Giants and Toys</i>
(Masumura, 1958), but have all the others on slate for the
future. Jonathan recommended, in addition to Tsai
Ming-Liang's<i> The Hole</i>, and the Korean film<i> Peppermint
Candy</i>, this one:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>And especially since you've written on
it, how about Yaguchi's<i> Hadashi no pikunikku</i> [Down the Drain],
which is also now available on DVD with English subtitles. If
"Japan's most unhappy girl" isn't alienated, then I don't
know what to call her.</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>I wanted to ask about this because it would not have occurred to
me. I know there is a certain context in which alienation and
the unhappy consciousness necessarily go together (I won't say which,
but his name begins with H), but is there really necessarily a direct
relation between alienation and unhappiness? I'm interested
because part of the point of an exercise like this of course is to
figure out what alienation<i> is</i>. I know you were writing
off the cuff here, but any thoughts on that? </div>
<div>By the way, I'm glad to hear you're working on Hashiguchi and
Yaguchi in a context I've sort of resolutely bracketed. They
came out of the same generation of PFF grand prizewinners (Hashiguchi
1989, Yaguchi 1990), and I've always associated them together.
It's an 8mm mid-length film, but Hashiguchi's prizewinner,<i> Yûbe
no himitsu</i> is really worth a look. It's about a small group of
high-school kids who sit around one evening and have a drinking party
in one of their houses. It's really desultory, and in the flow
of drunken conversation, one of them confesses his feelings for the
biggest, most athletic member of the group. He's okay with it,
but the other kids there, a boy and girl, you can just see them start
icing over and lapsing into cruel ostracism. He plays this
theme out in Nagisa no sindobaddo, but it's kind of crystallized
here, absent the story. It's very powerful, and gets stunning
performances out of what appear to be amateur actors. </div>
<div>yours,</div>
<div>J. Murphy</div>
<div>-- <br>
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