UK Premiere

Director Ryuichi Hiroki will be in attendance

Short Synopsis

Described as a Belle de Jour for the internet age, Hiroki’s psychotic drama comes to Raindance.

Review

With M, Hiroki has made a Belle de Jour for the internet age. A bored housewife, Satoko, lives comfortably with her husband Hideyuki and her son Masato. One day she receives an email from a dating site and begins living a double life working as a prostitute, hooking up with her prospective clients either by phone, texts or online.

She soon attracts the attention of a young man named Minoru, who works as a paperboy, and knows Satoko through his daily round and from seeing her play with her son in the park. Minoru bears the psychological scars of a traumatic childhood living with a drunken abusive father who frequently assaulted his mother. When one day after work Minoru’s friend shows him some erotic pictures of non-professional women, he recognises Satoko as one of them. He sees in her eyes the same terrified look his mother had as his father beat her. He has subsequently takes to obsessively trailing Satoko as she meets up with her clients. When he discovers she is being threatened by a young punk connected with a gangster ring, he finds himself unable to hold back from stepping in to intervene.

A psychotic drama with erotic overtones adapted from a novel by Seishu Hase, M covers Hiroki’s familiar obsession with people who follow their fantasies to the outer limits.

Jasper Sharp