Go-Con! Japanese Love Culture (2000)

Shintani Nobuyuki

Japan

100 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

Apparently, the Japanese are quite shy. Who knew? Being as inventive as they are, they have come up with a brilliant way to overcome their shyness: Organizing trendy meetings called go-con where they can hang out, and in the safety in numbers, score various representatives of the opposite sex. From what I saw, none of them struck me as particularly shy, and I am not just referring to the sex in the bathroom.

It seems that Shintani wanted to make a film about how people fail to communicate with each other for fear of revealing too much and getting shot down as a result. This is not earth-shattering stuff and you don't have to be Japanese to get it, just go to a frat party or two, it's all there, from the beer, the stupid drinking games, to the quick sex with strangers, except that it is done in much less style than the Japanese although with the same gusto.

Three friends arrange these go-con parties with various sets of women: high-schoolers, stewardesses, bar-hostesses, career chicks, housewives, and comic book freaks. It is mostly good clean fun with the occasional romp in the toilet. (I never understood the fascination with doing it in the stalls: it's cramped, it inconvenient, and it's quite smelly most of the time.)

Each of the three, however, has a secret. Taichi (Kawabata Ryuta) has been in love with Miyuki (Kimura Tae), whom he once met at a go-con. She went to New York and broke his heart so badly that he deleted her number from his cell's speed-dial. Talk about heart-rending pain in the new age. Hiroshi (Ando Ryoji) desperately tries to buy his favorite brand of cigarettes from a vending machine that cruelly dispenses only Lucky Strikes. When the good-hearted server Jun (Uchiyama Rina) shows him how to operate the machine, he immediately falls in love with her, only to get a kiss on the nose. Then there's the searing account of Kai's (Kosaka Kazuhito) struggle with his gold medal and the fact that he's not really attracted to some ugly chick.

Most of the drama unfolds as the guys play repetitive games with new bevies of women. The owners of the restaurant where they arrange the go-cons begin placing bets on who is going to nail whom. There is also the story of the mute cook with the cat, but I am perplexed about her role in the film. There's lots of giggling and embarrassingly easy sex for people who are reputedly shy. Or maybe it's the shy ones we need to watch out for? In any event, it takes the lack of tact of a computer nerd to start this whole shebang unrolling until it finally comes crashing down and all three find their loves and live happily ever after.

The world "culture" in the title is a misnomer. So is the word "love". The word "nonsense" is accurate but they did not use it, although I hear that the words "baloney" and "twaddle" were considered. Although you would not have guessed it without the film explicitly telling you, going out for fun parties, engaging in silly and harmless banter, and having sex with cute girls is all empty, meaningless, and a vain attempt to hide the profound loneliness which you can overcome only by staying home with an ugly partner forever. Actually, the film does not go that far. It only claims that you need a beautiful partner. However, it still insists there be only one... all the others "don't count" in the refreshingly specious syllogism that deduces that conclusion from the premise that unless you "really mean it" neither kisses nor sex can detract from your devotion to your partner.

The Deltamac DVD is pretty good. As a matter of fact, it is surprisingly good, with a stable clean picture, good colors, and a decent soundtrack. The English subtitles are almost 100% error-free and the translation is quite good (oh, how I wish I could say this for dialogue). There are, however, absolutely no extras on the DVD, which is disappointing because I was looking forward to the director's commentary, the feature-length documentary on the symbolism of the mute cook, the correspondence of the fat guy with consumerism, and the inside look at the makeup day of an ugly woman. I understand that the remake of James Brown's This Is a Man's World hymn to feminism was rejected as too un-Japanese.

One thing I learned from this film is that apparently Japanese girls come to the US to get laid. Where do I sign up for the welcome party?

January 12, 2003