We continue our journey in 2007 Japanese film land with my Number Two: Exte. About a half year ago I already dedicated a post to this film, which I will partly quote here while adding some new observations.
What is it about?
Japanese horror films are all too famous for the female ghosts who swing their long, black hair in front of their faces. The classic example is Ringu, where the videotaped ghost - hair first - even comes creeping out of the TV for her last killing spree, but the tradition is as old as Asia - another famous example is the story Kurokami, "Black Hair" in Kobayashi Masaki's cult classic Kwaidan. With the J-Horror boom fading, a certain tiredness with all those ghouly black tresses has inevitably set in, so here comes cult helmer Sono Shion with a tongue-in-cheek take on the subject which neatly puts things on their head.
In Ekusute ("Exte," "Hair Extensions") black hair growing uncontrollably is itself the ghostly killer. On top of that, a black-haired beauty in the form of Kuriyama Chiaki (the mace-wielding schoolgirl with the icy gaze from Kill Bill, now in a much sweeter role) takes center stage with such lustrous, long straight hair that she is almost a walking shampoo ad. That perfectly suits the film, because Exte is all about hair.
At the center stands the goofy, cross-dressing Yamazaki, a great role by Osugi Ren, who works in the city mortuary and stealthily collects the hair of the dead.
Custom officers have opened a container in the port and found it chock-full of black hair, not so surprising as Japan's newest female fad are "hair extensions" and domestic supply cannot keep up. The shock is that they also find a dead woman in the container, whose hair still seems to be growing. When Yamazaki notices that, later in the morgue, he elatedly carts her body off to his wooden shack. There he puts her in a hammock and to his ecstatic delight, the beautiful black hair indeed starts madly growing...
Yuko (Kuriyama Chiaki) is cheerfully working in a hair salon, how could it be otherwise in this hairy movie, that cynically is called "Gilles de Rais" after a notorious Medieval child murderer. As an apprentice practicing hard to become a full-fledged hairdresser soon, she happily cleans, clips and colors.
There is an important subplot concerning Mami, the daughter of Yuko's vampish elder sister Kiyomi (Tsugumi in a delightfully false role), who is abused by her mother and her mother's yakuza boyfriend. Kiyomi unceremoniously dumps Mami in Yuko's apartment when she wants to go partying. At first unhappy about having to take care of a child, by accident Yuko discovers the bruises with which Mami is covered because of all the beatings she gets... and so unofficially adopts Mami and starts a fight with sister Kiyomi (who would probably be happy to be rid of the little girl, but opposes Yuko purely out of spite) about control of her little niece.
The struggle between the sisters over little Mami runs parallel to the main story of the uncontrollably growing hair extensions and things heat up when both intersect. That happens when Yamazaki sells high-quality hair extensions made from the dead girl's locks to Yuko's salon. Now the vengeful spirit of the grisly murdered woman starts causing havoc and unsuspecting customers are being strangled by their hair extensions, which curl up into very efficient lassos and nooses. They also start spewing hair from the most unexpected places... Kiyomi steals a few such hair extensions from Yuko's apartment, with predictable but utterly satisfying results.
At the same time Yamazaki is drawn to Yuko's gorgeous, long straight hair (and that of the little niece, who resembles Yuko in this respect). And all the time the dead girl keeps spewing killer hair, whole rooms full of the black locks, like a nest made of hair...
What did I like about it?
- The long, black hair, growing and multiplying...
...and sprouting, not only on the head of the dead girl, but from all orifices of her body, in wave after wave. It shoots up from her mouth, her eyeballs, and from under her fingernails. It is not a movie to watch when you are eating something, your food will feel like a ball of hair and make you almost choke! The unruly hair in this film is like the slithering sand in Teshigahara's Women in the Dunes, an ominous presence dominating the whole film.
But there is also "good" hair in this film, the beautiful long straight hair of Kuriyama Chiaki (Yuko). And even the "bad", sprouting hair leads to good consequences, when Yuko and Mami are reborn as mother and daughter in that womb of hair that fills a whole room.
- the crankiness of Osugi Ren
Osugi Ren is a long-term collaborator of Kitano Takeshi and figures in many of Kitano's films. But this is his best flick by far, he goes completely through the roof with the fetishist character he plays. He even sings about his strange hobby in a terribly daft song that keeps ringing in your ears, "Hair, hair, my hair..." (The Japanese English word "hea" is used, instead of "kami no ke").
- the cool beauty of Kuriyama Chiaki
Eventually, it is female power that dominates this film. As reviewer Ronnie Scheib in Variety has so aptly put it, "Exte floats on an elemental tide of unleashed feminine power." And that is best personified in the cool beauty of Kuriyama Chiaki, whose long, black hair is of the straight and non-devilish type...
Links:
Official website (Japanese) with trailers and Yamazaki's song.
Website of director Shion Sono.
Website of Osugi Ren.
Official website of Kuriyama Chiaki.
