Review: Bare Essence of Life

My second to last day at the festival began with Bare Essence of Life, from Japanese writer/director Satoko Yokohama.  Ken'ichi Matsuyama starred in the second consecutive movie in my schedule.  Veteran Actress Komiko Aso plays love interest Machiko Kamiizumi.

In a jump of epic proportions, Matsuyama slides easily from a fugitive ninja in Kamui to a mentally challenged small-time vegetable farmer named Akito Mizuki in this film.  Akito lives with his grandmother, who is trying to prepare him to survive on his own.  With a mental age of about 7, things aren't going so well.  Spoiler alert, I'm about to divulge the rest of the plot.

Machiko moves to the remote northern Japanese village from Tokyo, where the love of her life was decapitated in a horrific car accident.  While the rest of the villagers whisper amongst themselves about her bad fortune, Akito falls in love with her.  Initially, he freaks her out with his stalker behavior.  That night, Akito, with the help of a local schoolboy, buries himself in the garden, with only his head sticking up out of the ground.  The helpful neighborhood kid sprays the entire garden with herbicide, including Akito's head, and then heads home, leaving Akito planted.  After being freed from his garden grave, he seeks out his love again, only this time she finds him more charming.  Of course, Akito credits the herbicide application to his newfound success.

Now obsessed with giving himself regular applications of herbicide, he falls ill.  As a result, presumably, his heart stops beating, but miraculously he's otherwise healthy as a horse.  Eventually, though, he gets shot dead by hunters while on a field trip to the woods with Machiko and her class.  Oddly, after the autopsy, the pathologist gives Machiko his brain in a jar presumably filled with formaldehyde, remarking that it's smaller than usual.  She then takes the kids back to the woods, strangely unafraid that someone else would get shot.  No one in fact does get shot, but they do stumble upon a bear.  Machiko tosses Akito's brain in the direction of the bear, and she and the kids escape to safety while he munches on his dinner of formaldehyde-soaked human brain.  The end.

And no, I'm not making this shit up.

I think the movie was supposed to be funny.  However, I guess I don't find mentally challenged farmer jokes all that funny.  Oh look!  He's throwing the produce at the customers.  Ha ha ha!  She won't buy anything now, and he won't have money to pay his bills.  Ha ha ha!  My imdb rating: 3/10.