The Depths / Touching the Skin of Eeriness
This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Ryusuke Hamaguchi: Early Works. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
The Depths (2010)
The most unexpected work in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s early oeuvre, The Depths is a queer thriller that circles around the tenuous relationship between an artist and his muse. Bae-hwan (Kim Min-jun) is a sought-after Korean fashion photographer in Japan for the wedding of a college friend, Gilsu (Soji Arai), reduced to shooting softcore porn. It’s in Gilsu’s studio that Bae-hwan becomes fascinated with Ryu (Hoshi Ishida), a cocky escort one step ahead of his pimp after a VIP client dies in his company. The film’s gritty urban scene contrasts sharply with the stable middle-class environs that are Hamaguchi’s usual milieu but he acquits himself well on unfamiliar territory in a film that feels like a possible path not chosen.
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Screenwriters: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kota Oura. With: Kim Min-jun, Hoshi Ishida, Soji Arai.
Touching the Skin of Eeriness (2013)
The river coursing through the city where Chihiro (Shota Sometani) has come to live with his older brother after the death of their parents provides director Ryusuke Hamaguchi ample opportunity for ominous metaphors in this unnerving study of adolescent estrangement. “One day, everything down there will surge up,” says Chihiro’s brother (Kiyohiko Shibukawa). Sullen and withdrawn, Chihiro loses himself in a modern dance class (led by Japanese choreographer Osamu Jareo) in which he and Naoyo (Hoshi Ishida) rehearse intricate movements around one another but never touch. Expression without connection becomes the catalyst for the violent emotional surge that transforms this into Hamaguchi’s River’s Edge. That it ends with “To be continued” suggests the film was intended as a rehearsal itself for something more.
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Screenwriter: Tomoyuki Takahashi. With: Shota Sometani, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Hoshi Ishida.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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