Hardhead Fool

Tanaka lives alone in a rented apartment and goes to work every day immaculately dressed in a suit and tie. However, he is hardly your average office cleric He is a yakuza, a gangster, who spends his time dealing drugs, assaulting people and doing dirty work for his big boss. He even voluntarily spent eight years in jail doing time for him. The boss still thinks he is a waste of space, or as useless as a stone or a stick as he is apt to say.The Japanese title literally means ''The Sadness of the Stick'', and to say that Tanaka is not wholly satisfied with his life is an understatement. To strengthen his reputation within the organization he allows himself to get stabbed in the stomach on purpose, and he subsequently stitches up his wound at home on the bathroom floor. When Tanaka wants to relax from his gory profession he likes to meet one of his girlfriends. For example, the girl Yoko who works in a flower shop, for whom Tanaka has other plans. Or the older Yoshie who is a prostitute with an unusual fetish. Tanaka discovers how to give her multiple orgasms only by mentioning his numerous scars. The veteran director Tatsumi Kumashiro made his debut in the sixties and is inspired by Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave. He claims that the film investigates personal freedom in the 90's.The Yakuza has been portrayed in numerous stereotypical films in Japan. In Hardhead Fool Kumashiro literally brings new blood to a tired genre. His success as a director of erotic films comes in handy in scenes where Tanaka spends time with his girlfriends. Kumashiro smoothly avoids the most common excesses of the genre and has managed to give his film a refreshingly everyday atmosphere, for example in scenes where the main character cleans the apartment while discussing business on his cordless phone. The life of a gangster rarely seemed so unglamorous. PES

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Orig. titel
Bo no kAnashimi: Medverkande
Eiji Okuda, Eiko Nagashima, Sho Aikawa: Producent
Hidehiro Ito, Yasuhide Kidota, Kinya Yagi, Misa Ôkatsu: Manus
Tatsumi Kumashiro & Hidehiro Ito, based on the novel by Kenzo Kitakata: Foto
Junichiro Hayashi: Musik
Tatsunori Oda