Tel-Club

All diary films are ego-driven, but Murakami's very funny contribution to the genre is much more self-deprecatory and self-mocking than most. Returning to his family home in Takasaki (= sticksville) for the birth of his sister-in-law's first child, he goes a bit stir crazy waiting for the baby to arrive. He chances on the Penguin Telephone Dating Club, pays and sits waiting for girls to call. Four in a row stand him up; then the fifth shows up and agrees to go out with him but won't let him shoot her face. Your guess is as good as mine where documentary slides into fiction, but Murakami wittily puts his finger on a problem central to all documentary film-making: some subjects just don't want to be filmed.