Disturbing and well-crafted portrait of a broken family dealing with their agony and desperation by inflicting it upon others, as well as themselves. Japanese stalwart Koji Yakusho (13 Assassins, Kairo) leads as the vicious, alcoholic father on the hunt for his missing daughter, whose pain is more complicated than her absent parents know. Multilayered narrative and hyper-kinetic editing style reveal tortured emotions behind the graphic violence, although director Tatsuya Nakashima (Confessions, Kamikaze Girls) still has problems drawing uniformly strong performances from a young cast and spends too much time with a secondary character infatuated with Kanako. Utilizing animation, musical montage, and nearly every possible cinematic tool, the film drains the audience until we are as resigned to Kanako's fate as she is. Easily Nakashima's best film, although still flawed. Fans of Japanese aesthetics may love it.
Review of The World of Kanako
