Noisy Requiem

(Tsuito no Zawameki, 1988)

«The reason why I chose the Kamagasaki district of Osaka for the location was that I felt that the place had a neglected sort of feel to it, since the characters who appear in the movie are also alienated by society. In these circumstances of ongoing "neglect", each of the characters lives their lives taking pleasure in their own individual way; the beloved mannequin, the younger sister, dwarfism and the crotch-shaped piece of wood. Each form their love takes deviates from the generally accepted values of society. In other words, they are "abnormal" and "degenerate". The characters' actions are entirely motivated by their expressions for the people and objects they love. These may be unforgivable criminal acts, but I find their direct expressions of love beautiful. I think they behave like this because of their insatiable blind purity.

As an example, a beautiful young man has sex with his sister and kills her. Then he buries her, but he can't stop himself and still has obsessive feelings in his mind. He wants to bury her inside of him by eating her flesh, so he eats her. This is an abnormal and criminal action in terms of public order and morality. However, I feel there's some kind of beauty in his acts. At the end of the movie, the dead sister becomes a ghost, and she tenderly watches her brother playing. Her feeling towards her brother is "Thank you for loving me." So, as a person engaged in creative expression, I would like to think about these questions: "Is the love people in the world have close to or the same as this type of love?", "Is the love you feel something pure or just superficial, something artificial and tatty?" What I am trying to express is that love is something much more vast and profound.

To avoid being misunderstood, I would like to stress that the expressions of love contained within the movie are depicted absolutely as just that: expressions within an artistic production, and in no way as positive affirmations of violence. With this in mind, I'd like to say to your readers please live your life prudently, and with love. Where Are We Going?, The Noisy Requiem, Pig-Chicken Suicide and Rusty Empty Can - all of my movies are about love.»

- Yoshihiko Matsui in Midnight Eye