Thursday 12 October 2023

NZIFF 2023: #Manhole ( Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, 2023)

 When a salaryman (Yûto Nakajima) falls into the sewer, he finds himself trapped.

Unable to figure out where he is (or tell the authorities), he comes up with an audacious scheme to draw attention to his plight…





While it starts out as a high concept thriller, #Manhole pushes its concept so high it ends in outer space.


At first, Shunsuke Kawamura seems like an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation. As the film progresses, any assumptions about who our protagonist is have been destroyed.


The unique hook - our hero draws attention by creating an online persona as a beautiful young woman - is the catalyst for a blackly comic skewering of online engagement, and the ways in which it can grow and mutate into something unrecognisable. 


His deception gets him attention, and helps him figure out his location, but it also creates a microcosm around the central character, where he is forced to confront his past: he was a nobody who stole another man’s identity.


The location itself is no mystery to our lead, but the site of past trauma, with our hero coming literally face-to-face with his original sin. It is the return of the repressed as farce, karma by way of Rube Goldberg.


The film’s tone is increasingly delirious and darkly comic as these revelations pile on each other. 


Over-the-top barely captures its essence.


While it starts as a small, claustrophobic thriller, by its deranged climax, #Manhole has transformed into a maximalist surreal horror comedy.


It is a hell of a lot of movie. And a hell of a lot of fun! 


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