A Painful Pair

DV-shot Japanese indie with an interesting premise (a young husband and wife literally feel each other's pain) - which it squanders on a mixture of farce and comedy of embarrassment. The husband Ryo (Nishijima) is a teacher, stalked by an overweight female pupil; the wife Natsu (Tadano) is an office worker harassed by a gloomy, no-hoper colleague (Suzuki, reprising a persona established in his One Piece! shorts). It aims for a kind of kooky charm, but it's clumsily directed and the underlying attitudes seem deeply misanthropic. The supporting cast includes two other indie directors, Hara and Hiroki, neither very funny.