Dare review - THE WORLD OF KANAKO by Tetsuya Nakashima

A vile father discovers the death of her estranged daughter's innocence in Tetsuya Nakashima's post modernist anti-fairytale The World of Kanako, screened in the Dare section of the 58th BFI London Film Festival.
 
A former cop turned sour and kicked off the service after a violent incident following the discovery of his wife's unfaithfulness is suddenly caught in a murderous affair at a convenience store, which he becomes a prime suspect. Who wouldn't suspect a man as unscupuolous and decadent as Akikazu, a man plagued by a probable mental illness and definite substance abuse she seems to live on a life of hatred.
 
The catch is that around the same time, his wife calls him years after their last contact, worried about the disappearance of her lost daughter. This turn of events leads him down a frantic journey which leads him down a dark path to the discovery of her estranged daughter's true identity, which gradually turns out to be much less innocent than he thought.
There is a lot happening in Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako, and a lot to take in not only on a narrative level but also on a psychological level. Brought to live in a hyper stylised and post modernist way, this is a film that from the very beginning aims and quite frankly succeeds to not only emotionally disorient his audience, but also bluntly and happily takes them out of their comfort zone. This is particularly achieved by the sharp editing that equally sharply contrasts fairytale with exploitation and violence, to the point where it seems like The World of Kanako seems to actually be the mixture of two different films - one a modern western, thriller, gangster story referencing sixties exploitation with an exaggerated accentuating of blood, gore and gunshots while the other is a modern fairytale romance that gradually covers itself in dark shadows.
 
The contrasts do not end there. All the while, Nakashima aims to make each frame of his film scream drama and comedy at once. His penmenship of the characters also points at their ridiculousness and their malignant nature. The narrative, on the other hand, whilst distorted and strange, closely resembles and alarming and disturbing incarnation of Alice in Wonderland.
 
Despite an almost complete lack of easily likeable characters, The World of Kanako is entrancing and attention grabbing from start to finish. In the end, the strange paradox that enwraps the film is that we start to give up on any hopeful and positive revolution, and let ourselves get carried away in the titular world of Kanako, a world of antiheroes where there no greener grass to be found on any side. This is a nightmarish vision that resembles works such as Oldboy or even, at a faster pace, the cold law of the land of Spaghetti Westerns and exploitation thriller. However, in some parts, it even dares to push its boundaries further to reach an aggressive level of surrealism amplified by a stylistic cohesion and a central schizophrenic performance by Koji Yakusho in the leading role.