NO ONE'S ARK

SUNDAY 26 OCTOBER AT 2:50PM UGC SHAFTESBURY AVE SCREEN 1

Country Japan Running Time 111 mins Format 35mm Director Yamashita Nobuhiro Producer Mukai Kosuke S'play Mukai Kosuke, Yamashita Nobuhiro DoP Kondo Ryuto, Mukai Kosuke Cast Yamamoto Hiroshi, Kotera Tomoko, Hosoe Yuko, Yamamoto Takeshi, Tanaka Akiko Print Source Planet Studyo E planet1@m11.alpha-net.ne.jp

No-hoper Daisuke arrives in his backwater hometown with dowdy girlfriend Hisako in tow. He has just returned from several years in Tokyo, hideously in debt, in the hope of making his fortune peddling a revolting tasting health drink called Akajiru to the locals. After outlining his sales plan to his bewildered father, the two take up residence under his parents' roof and systematically work their way through Daisuke's threadbare network of contacts from his schooldays, unearthing a barrage of small-town resentment and shattered illusions in the process.

With the Japanese title translating as 'Ship of Fools', No One's Ark is a bittersweet portrait of two thoroughly odd people, bonded by a relationship that the director describes as 'too lazy to call love' and futilely clinging on to the dream of free enterprise in a country a world removed from the economic miracle of Japan in the '80s. The characters are minutely observed, the performances perfectly pitched, and the end results are simultaneously poignantly low-key and achingly funny. You could certainly do far worse than spend two hours with Yamashita's parade of loveable idiots. JS

Yamashita Nobuhiro was born in 1976. He met Kumakiri Kazuyoshi (director, Kichiku, 1997), at a residence of Osaka University of Arts and worked with him as assistant director. His first feature was the acclaimed Hazy Life (1999).