Tomogui
Director: Shinji Aoyama
Writer: Haruhiko Arai
Based on: Shinya Tanaka’s novel
Cast: Masaki Suda, Misaki Kinoshita, Yukiko Shinohara, Ken Mitsuishi, Yûko Tanaka
Part of: Viennale

Plot:
Toma (Masaki Suda) lives in a small town. His mother Jinko (Yûko Tanaka) is a one-armed fish salesperson with whom he spends a lot of time. He is in love with his girlfriend Chigusa (Misaki Kinoshita) and everything could be great – if Toma didn’t live with his extremely violent father (Ken Mitsuishi) and his new girlfriend Kotoko (Yukiko Shinohara). Toma fears nothing more than that he could end up just like him.

When I came into the cinema for Tomogui, I arrived just in time to hear an employee ask everybody to move to the center of the rows because the film was sold out and it would be easier for latecomers to find a seat that way. Said employee was rudely interrupted by an old cantankerous fuck who screamed that people who don’t know Japanese or the Japanese culture should just leave and had no business watching a Japanese movie anyway. Since I hit the first really rotten egg of this year’s Viennale movies with Tomogui, I am thinking that I maybe should have taken his advice.

I have rarely seen a film that was as obsessed with sex as this one. And I’m really no prude but that really was something else. I have seen porn that was less concerned with sex. And not only is it filled to the brim with sex, all of the sex is loaded with violence against women.

And I know that it is part of the story that the movie tells: that Toma really worries that he will end up like his father, who only gets off when he dominates and abuses the women he’s with. But especially because he worries so much about this, I thought it incredibly insulting that he ends up being violent as well, at least for a bit. Because he “couldn’t help himself.” Because his hand “acted on its own accord” basically. And when does it end? When a woman tells him no.

And that makes me sick to the stomach. As if abusers, despite their best intentions, just couldn’t help it and therefore aren’t responsible for their actions. And at the same time, as if they could stop immediately once their victim tells them no. As if that’s all they needed to hear and if the victim hadn’t told them earlier that they shouldn’t do it, it’s the victim’s fault for continuing to be abused. Fuck you, movie, is what I say to that.

Apart from making me angry, the movie elicited one more emotion from me and that was boredom. And I really can do without a film that simultaneously bores me and riles me up.

Summarizing: Fuck no.