The Hair Opera

Obitani is a trainee opera singer and aspiring film-maker casting about for ways to entertain his audience when he learns of an exhibition by woman artist Yosefu Kosuzu; it comprises neatly mounted and dated specimens of pubic hair from all the men she has slept with. Obitani excitedly interviews her and then invites her to exchange film 'letters' with him. The film is mostly a compilation of those letters, chronicling a conceptual relationship which begins to break down when it emerges that what Obitani wants most is a place in Kosuzu's next exhibition. Already a classic of Japanese independent cinema, this is the most startling first-person film-making since David Holzman's famous Diary. The climactic shaving scene left me almost on the floor.