Stakeout

Yoshioka (Koichi), a man who says he's a cop, persuades Sumire (Wakabayashi) to let him into her high-rise apartment; he says he needs to use her balcony to stakeout a suspected criminal in the block opposite. For security, she claims to have a husband, due back soon from a business trip. But Yoshioka behaves oddly from the start: makes himself too much at home, intrudes into her privacy, keeps talking about sex. And then he refuses to leave. Shot on DV in b/w, with flashbacks in colour, this exceptionally tense thriller is by far the best thing Shinohara has done since his indie featurette Work on the Grass. It's essentially a two-hander, superbly played by both leads, and it's their interaction that ignites the series of narrative and psychological twists.