Saturday, May 6 at 9:00PM

Hanasareru Gang

Directed by Nobuhiro Suwa
Japan 1984, DCP, color, 85 min. Japanese with English subtitles

If the French nouvelle vague is an implicit reference point, or at least shares a certain sensibility with the films in this lineup—many of which feel like uninhibited, no-holds-barred experiments very loosely inspired by Truffaut, Rivette or Godard—then Hanasareru Gang is the only open homage to the French filmmakers. Genre elements such as gangsters, a suitcase full of money, and a girl who joins them for their misadventures build a kaleidoscopic game of filmic conventions. Always self-aware and willing to slip back and forth between storytelling and self-reflexivity with a light touch, Hanasareru Gang is easily recognizable as a complex yet passionately energetic variation of Suwa’s more austere later films. One of the directors most explicitly influenced by French cinema, Suwa is best known outside of Japan for his H Story (2001), a film that starred Beatrice Dalle and was a remake of sorts of—and meta-filmic reflection on—Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Film descriptions by Alexander Zahlten.