R100 actually seems like a normal movie for 40 minutes or so, even if its setup is a little out-there. A man leads a quietly desperate life, working as a store salesman and tending his young son, while his wife lies in a long-term coma. He signs on with an unusual escort service, one that provides an outlet for his hidden masochistic fantasies: For a year, a series of leather-clad women will show up unexpectedly to dole out physical punishment or public humiliation. He can’t get out of the contract once it begins, and he quickly learns that a dominatrix is likely to pop up at the most awkward moments.
Like I said, a normal movie. But then Hitoshi Matsumoto’s film begins to stretch out into full-on gonzo nuttiness, starting with the first of a series of scenes of state censors exiting a screening room. They are evidently in the midst of watching R100, and they’re not pleased about the film’s outrageous content. A film rep helpfully explains that the director has stated that the movie is not meant to be understood by anyone under the age of 100. (The title is a play on the Japanese movie rating system, in which R18—for movies not meant for people under 18 years old—is the most restrictive.) Back in the movie proper, as our main character Takafumi (Nao Omori) tries to get out of his agreement, he uncovers growing revelations about the true nature of his bondage contract. A particularly grotesque session with an unlucky dominatrix ends with an accident, and the S&M service responds with a backlash against its hapless client.
Matsumoto was a hugely popular comedian in Japan before he turned to film directing (his Big Man Japan played here in 2009), and R100 never stops being wildly, broadly comic. Some of the jokes are good, some obvious, but the whole thing escalates into considerably more than 50 shades of weird. There’s a strain in Japanese movies that wants to be more bizarre than anything that came before it, and R100 comes close at times—its final few images are defiantly surreal, even if they have a satirical point. I think the film veers off too far into such strangeness (could there be a Japanese TV game show spun off from all this?), but connoisseurs of this kind of thing will find the ripeness hard to resist.
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R100 Runs Fri., Feb. 13–Thurs., Feb. 19 at Grand Illusion. Not rated. 100 minutes.
