Vibrator

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Year Released: 2003
Rating: 0.0

The silly five minute opening scene, which takes place in a convenience store and features goofy angles and ridiculous voice-over should have been the tip-off that this wasn't going to be the next Chungking Express. When the two main characters - a nutty anorexic with esteem problems and the punk truck driver (with more sleazy life experience than Charles Bukowski) she picks up - start roaming around Japan road-trip style, it literally becomes a film of banal sex scenes in the back seat with banal conversations in the front. The girl's 'inner thoughts,' usually on black title cards, consist of such howlers as "With a traveling companion, the world smiles at you," "I lust after the hand that smites" and "The landscape peels away before us. Our skin is chafed" - and watching the two oddballs try to 'resolve' their problems and find common ground is about as fulfilling as watching Montel Williams console incestuous love triangles.