13th New York Asian Film Festival

Jun 27 - Jul 14, 2014

Photo:

New York Premiere

Maruyama, the Middle Schooler

中学生円山

To paraphrase Alicia Keys, "Some people live for the fortune / Some people live just for the fame." And some, well… some live to give themselves a good blowjob. Described by acclaimed actor/scriptwriter/director Kudo Kankuro (writer of Ping Pong and Zebraman) as a “self-fellatio” comedy, Maruyama is a deeply moving coming-of-age story, an exploration of the liberating possibilities of the human imagination, and a study of what it means to live with other people. The sole spine-cracking ambition in life of sex-crazed 14-year-old Maruyama (Hiraoka Takuma) is to lick his own weenie. Life is all fun, games, and stretching (lots of stretching) for Maruyama until he encounters a strange newcomer, a nerdy, busybody single father (Kusanagi Tsuyoshi) who systematically finds fault with his apartment-complex neighbors. Things take a weird turn when corpses are found in the otherwise quiet neighborhood, and Maruyama soon suspects that the odd fellow might actually be a mass murderer. As his imagination gets out of control, the inhabitants of the whole complex become the cast in an action-packed saga of assassinations and revenge. Reality becomes fantasy and vice versa, as the film becomes a full-on celebration of the adolescent spirit and the power of a hormone-fueled imagination.

Director: Kudo Kankuro
Cast: Iwamatsu Ryo, Hara Fumina, Kariya Yuiko, Nabemoto Nanami, Nakamura Toru, Sakai Maki, Yang Ik-June, Endo Kenji, Takuma Hiraoka, Kusanagi Tsuyoshi
Languages: Japanese with English subtitles
2013; 119 min.; BluRay

SCHEDULE:

Friday July 11, 8:30pm
Japan Society