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Vacation

BAFICI 2009
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Info
Year:

2008
Original Title:

Vacation
País:

Japón 
Director:

Hajime Kadoi
Color:

Color
Format:

35 mm
Duration:

112 min
Cast:
  • Kaoru Kobayashi, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Nene Ohtsuka
Production:
  • GUIÓN: Dai Sako
  • FOTOGRAFÍA: Yukihiro Okimura
  • MONTAJE: Naoki Kaneko
  • PRODUCCIÓN: Kazuhiro Koike

Synopsis

Vacation is based on a short story by Akira Yoshimura, the same author of the novel On Parole, filmed by Shohei Imamura under the title The Eel in 1997. As in that film, there's a prison, but not the possibility of getting out of it for one of the two main characters. The other is able to do it because instead of being on death row, he's one of the guards. Two are the protagonists, and two are also the series of events that make up the film. The title refers to what both stories have in common, and to the way in which institutions configure both death and life. Kadoi's second feature talks about ordinary people, by means of a sober mise en scène that alternates two different instances in time, not because of a tendency towards exhibitionism, but to mirror the anecdote, which would have seemed trivial under a conventional narrative. If the execution in Nagisha Oshima's Death by Hanging (Koshikei, 1968) was unforgettable for its aggressive, fierce editing, the one in Vacation becomes unbearable for the fearlessness of its development, for how necessary it becomes to the protagonist, for the fatal similarity one can find between it and each of the everyday rituals which surround the members of the audience.