Broken Flower

If three words were sufficient to summarize and describe Japanese director Go Shibata's new film Late Bloomer, they would be: disturbing, tragic, and original. Similar to the director's featured debut NN 891102, the subject of Late Bloomer departs greatly from the norm and is anything but ordinary. Unlike other movies of its genre, Late Bloomer, eerily and dramatically filmed in black and white, portrays handicapped individuals in an ambiguous light that leaves the viewer both sympathetic and uneasy.

The film tells the story of Sumida-san, a wheelchair-bound, severely handicapped man who relies on an electronic voice box to communicate with others. Living under the companionship of his musician friend and caretaker, Take, Sumida-san spends his life drinking it up and partying at rock concerts like any other able-bodied individual. That is until Nobuko, a young female college student, enters his life. Needless to say, Sumida-san falls in love with her. However the ending of this story is anything but happy. The film takes a dark turn when seeing that Nobuko is actually interested in Take, Sumida-san is left heartbroken. Now without hope and faith in humanity and the world he lives in, Sumida-san embarks on a vindictive mission to destroy everything and everyone within it.

Late Bloomer's experimental nature goes beyond its unusual storyline, which chronicles the downward spiral of Sumida-san as he is driven to madness, witnessing every gruesome act of vendetta which he commits upon first familiar, then random individuals. By shooting Late Bloomer in black and white and digital video and accompanying it with the sound design of electronic art band World's End Girlfriend, Shibata creates a truly unique cinematographic experience, one which draws its audience directly into the eerie psychological world of Sumida-san.

The performance delivered by Masakiyo, who plays Sumida-san, is truly spectacular: so humane yet sadistic, so horrific yet pitiful. His dramatic character transformation and the film's shocking climax leave audiences reevaluating any prior prejudices they have toward disabled people upon entering the theater. People tend to dislike spending time with crippled individuals out of fear that they become associated as one of them. By presenting disabled individuals as human beings, who like all able-bodied individuals, are capable of feeling pain and happiness, jealousy and pride, the film replaces such irrational fears with something truly scary: an insight into the mind of a man, who is so sick of being patronized for his condition and being invisible, that he is driven to madness and murder.