Tony Takitani (2005)

I'm all for minimalism, but there's gotta be limits. This film is based on a short story that, as far as I can tell, is concerned exclusively with the inner life of its title character. To get this across, director Jun Ichikawa slathers his film in narration (presumably straight from the source), forgetting that film is primarily a visual storytelling medium. Ichikawa's spare visual sense is an asset, but it's compromised by his insistence on faithfulness to his source, which leads to the fatal error of overstatement. If Ichikawa was a more confident filmmaker, he could have ditched the voiceover and told us everything we need to know through what's on the bigass screen in front of us. (I weep to imagine what Tsai Ming-liang could have done with this.) As I see it, the only people who should be praising this bare ruined cinematic zero are people who secretly hate movies. This isn't a film -- it's an audiobook with pictures.

Grade: C