Air Doll
Posted: 2 Feb 2010
You can’t fault the daring of the premise: Hideo (Itsuji Itao), a waiter by trade, enjoys a rewarding relationship at home with Nozomi, a blow-up doll with whom he eats at the dinner table and to whom he makes love at night. Things liven up when Nozomi secretly comes to life – played by Korean actress Bae Doo-na (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, The Host) – and starts to live a parallel existence, taking a job in a video shop, exploring the city and learning how to live in the real world.
Following up on his sublimely poignant dissection of the Japanese family in Still Walking, director Hirokazu Kore-eda adapts Yoshie Gouda’s 20-page manga, The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl, for his seventh feature. He earns full marks here for sidestepping sleaze and gimmickry in favour of a good-looking, tender modern fairytale as he tries his best to share with us Nozomi’s wonder at seeing the world with fresh eyes. However, the sense of whimsy only grows with time as you realise that this is a very slim story and its pleasures are only skin deep.
Dave Calhoun
Dir Hirokazu Kore-eda, Category IIB, 117 mins, opens Thursday 4
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