“Thy rod and thy staff will bumfuck me…thy kingdom come in my ass…”

Can a gritty, no-exit gangster movie brimming with hardcore sex and degradation also be a tender love story filled with poetic dialogue and an experimental arthouse feature? The answer, of course, is no, but Tokyo Elegy, from South African underground filmmaker Ian Kerkhof, swings for the fences in its effort to stitch all of those elements together in its 90-minute running time. And while the end result is frequently confusing and more than a little pretentious, it’s never boring.

Dutch actor Thom Hoffman (Dogville) plays Jack, a criminal on the lam after killing a pair of cops. He runs into porn actress Keiko (played by real-life Japanese porn star Mai Hoshino) in a bar, and after banging her brains out in the bathroom (a poster for Kerkhof’s film Wasted! adorns one wall), he moves into her apartment to hide out. The pair quickly falls into a round-the-clock routine of drugs and fucking, but the romance has a time limit; Jack has apparently ratted out a former partner, and the local yakuza plan to settle the score within seven days. As his final days slowly wind down, Jack attempts to do good by helping Keiko deal with her childhood memories of sexual abuse.

As mentioned earlier, Tokyo Elegy has a lot on its plate, and at times, the heavy drama and Jack’s frequent poetic monologues (the film is inspired by the poetry of Jack Henry Abbott, a two-time convicted felon who wrote the best-selling In The Belly of the Beast), combined with some serious moments of arthouse ennui—be prepared for lots of staring into space and pregnant pauses—make for a trying experience. Add to that an atrocious sound mix that muffles most of the dialogue, and even the most devoted underground film freak may want to start tearing out his or her eyebrows within a half-hour’s time. But the sex is vigorous and definitely hardcore (though as with all Japanese porn, it’s digitally obscured), and Kerkhof keeps the film visually stimulating by unleashing a torrent of digital video effects, some quite overwhelming (epileptic viewers should avoid the scene in which Keiko watches Richard Kern’s Fingered), but all of which help to illustrate the impulsive, no-holds-barred nature of Jack and Keiko’s relationship, and the fragmented state of Jack’s mind as his fate draws nearer with each minute. Tokyo Elegy is definitely not everyone’s cup of green tea (which, the film tells us, is the soul of Japan), but for those seeking something outside their usual DVD diet, it’s a challenging but intriguing change of pace.
__________________________________________________________________________