Rachel Lucas, Anthony Lucas-Smith and Taki Abe from Bondi Tsunami

I've been having a pretty fun weekend, and I actually managed an all-nighter on Friday night. And I thought I was getting too old for all that crap! He he. No way, I had a ball. I finally got to see Bondi Tsunami, the Australian Japanese surfing road film I mentioned here. There was a party screening and follow-up Q & A with the director, Rachel Lucas, the producer, Anthony Lucas-Smith, and main character, Taki Abe at Super-Deluxe in Roppongi.

It was a strongly visual film with intensely saturated colour (my fave use of colour), a disjointed non-linear narrative, some crazy editing, cool music and interesting images. I really, really enjoyed the first half of the film, it was exciting and intoxicating and I couldn't wait to see how it would unfold.... Halfway through the film, though, around the time the Gunjaman appears, it started to lose it's punch and get really confusing and well, it was just waaaay too long.

The whole thing is meant to have a dreamy, comic strip aesthetic, with surreal characters and images - kinda like a long music clip, and it certainly achieved those things. But I have 2 issues - one was the lack of connection with any of the characters (well - maybe with Shark - the main character, but only marginally) - it felt shallow and superficial. The second was the length. It was just wayyyy too long.

I was also initially pissed off by the character of Kimiko as yet another dumb super-kawaii Japanese bimbo-chick, but she created that character herself - the actors all kinda formed their own characters with only the slightest of direction hints from Rachel, and the whole thing was meant to be cartoonesque so I guess in the scheme of things it was all OK.

Anywayyyy, I found myself propped up at the bar at 4 am till closing time with Smithy, the films friendly producer, after a long evening of shenanigans with the crew and a bunch of other movie-screening people in some of the banker-bars in the Roppongi Hills area (man, where do all those people go during the daylight? I had never seen so many foreigners in one place in Tokyo - and so many accents and languages - French, German, Scottish, Brits, Irish, Spanish, some European languages I couldn't guess - definitely Nordic though, Hebrew, Australians, Canadians and loud Americans. Have to confess it was nice to actually get chatted up on more than one occasion - it's been a long time since that happened! Yeah, I really need to get out more).

We talked a long while about the film, and found out something that was not clear during the watching - that the whole movie is a series of Sharks thoughts - at the beginning and the end of the film, you see him sitting on a hill looking out at the ocean, thinking about stuff. The film is a collection of vivid, filtered aspects of memories and thoughts and parodies.... This really helped me understand the film a whole lot better, and it's a shame it's not clearer in the movie itself. Interesting thing is, this film really gets people talking. "What the hell is it about?" being the major question. Apparantly it becomes clearer with each viewing... I guess I need to watch it again.

I also heard that they have some really exciting meetings scheduled for the coming weeks, so it looks like the ball has really started to roll for Rachel, Smithy and Taki. Congratulations on your excellent independent achievement and here's to the future! Cheers. What a fun night it was.