Sashimi

沙西米

Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 86 mins.

Director: Pan Zhiyuan 潘志远.

Rating: 3/10.

Inept drama of obsessive love has nice photography but an incoherent, faux-arty script.

STORY

Japan, Apr 2011. Discovering he is HIV positive, an actor (Onishi Yukiya) hangs himself as the Fukushima earthquake hits the country. His lover, AV actress Asano Natsumi (Hatano Yui), learns the news and realises she may also be HIV positive. She decides to visit an address in Yilan county, northeast Taiwan, from where she has been receiving postcards addressed to a woman called Yoshiko asking if everything is okay. The sender of the postcards is Gao Zhenming (Li Kangsheng), who runs a sashimi restaurant-cum-guest house on the coast and looks after Pebble (Xie Fei), his young son by Yoshiko. Gao Zhenming left Japan eight years ago after Yoshiko, whom he believes still lives in Tokyo, left him. He now sleeps with a young woman, Xiaomin (Ji Peihui), who helps out at the restaurant. But as he tells his friend Tao (Zhou Xiaoan), he still can’t understand why Yoshiko separated from him. Along with her gay manager Tamura (Takuya Brother), Asano Natsumi arrives at the guest house. Gao Zhenming mistakes her for Yoshiko and asks her why she’s come; she says, because of the postcards. But she insists she is not Yoshiko, even though she looks like her, and eventually tells him she is an AV actress. When her manager returns from an unhappy local fling, Asano Natsumi tells him she’s experienced a little of what it feels like to be loved by someone. Meanwhile, Xiaomin, unhappy over Gao Zhenming’s obsession with Asano Natsumi, threatens to leave. And a local AV shop owner (Hao Zi), who supplies Gao Zhenming with porno videos, recognises Asano Natsumi and pays one of his customers (Axiang) to secretly videocam her.

REVIEW

Li Kangsheng 李康生, actor-muse of Taiwan-based Chinese Malaysian director Cai Mingliang 蔡明亮, adds another weird entry to his CV with Sashimi 沙西米, an arty reflection on obsessive love and regret that’s nicely shot but is torpedoed by an incoherent, often laughable script and a complete lack of any passion or drama. Now 46, the once boyish-looking Li looks and sounds old and tired here, as a sashimi chef on the coast of Taiwan who mistakes a visiting AV star for his separated Japanese wife. Barely making sense at a plot level, and full of faux-arty touches, this second solo feature by Pan Zhiyuan 潘志远, a Taiwan writer-director in his late 40s who previously made potboiler street-gang drama The Touch of Fate 指间的重量 (2006), is likely to be better remembered for the performance of real-life Japanese AV star Hatano Yui 波多野结衣, 26, in her first substantial role in a non-porno movie.

Though playing an AV star (who’s just discovered her late lover was HIV positive), Hatano largely keeps her clothes on here, and evinces a poised grace when the script gives her the chance. Visiting Taiwan to track down the sender of a series of postcards, she finds herself mistaken for the man’s separated wife, despite her protests to the opposite. Apart from copious scenes of sashimi preparation, that’s pretty much it, though the man’s girlfriend-cum-assistant (played OK by American-Taiwanese actress Ji Peihui 纪培慧, aka Teresa Daley) hovers jealously on the fringes and, in the film’s wildest miscalculation, Taiwan comic duo Plungon (Hao Zi 浩子, Axiang 阿翔) keep popping up to provide comic schtick as an AV shop-owner and a gullible customer. Even weirder, and underlining the film’s complete lack of any focus, is a clumsy guest role, as the AV star’s louche manager, by Shinjuku gay bar owner Takuya Brother 拓也哥  (aka Iguchi Daisuke 井口大佑), who leapt to fame via a memorable demonstration of oral sex on a late-night Japanese satellite channel.

CREDITS

Presented by Mei Ah Entertainment Group (HK), Mei Ah Entertainment Development (TW).

Script: Sun Fajun, Pan Zhiyuan. Photography: Song Wenzhong. Editing: Xiao Ruguan. Music supervision: Qin Xuzhang. Art direction: Chen Kaihua. Styling: Li Huilun. Sound: Chen Weiliang, Du Duzhi. Visual effects: Li Zhaohua (TWR Entertainment Visual Effects).

Cast: Li Kangsheng (Gao Zhenming), Hatano Yui (Asano Natsumi; Yoshiko), Ji Peihui [Teresa Daley] (Xiaomin), Takuya Brother [Iguchi Daisuke] (Tamura, Asano Natsumi’s manager), Su Da (Xun), Hao Zi [Xie Xinhao] (AV shop owner), Axiang (his favourite customer), Zhou Xiaoan (Tao), Xie Fei (Pebble, Chen-ming’s son), Kitamura Toyoharu (Japanese gangster), Kasai Kenji (AV director), Li Yachen (make-up artist), Onishi Yukiya (Japanese actor).

Premiere: Osaka Asian Film Festival (Competition), 12 Mar 2015.

Release: Taiwan, 24 Apr 2015; Hong Kong, tba.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 28 Apr 2015.)