Man, Woman and the Wall

Ricochet Releasing

(TLA)

R1 DVD

Man, Woman and the Wall is a very strange man meets girl sort of tale. It has a uniquely voyeuristic twist and each of the major male protagonists seem distinctly self obsessed and locked with fantasy. It seems the major choice of sexuality here is voyeurism mixed with masturbation and this geekish “sex romp” offers us a strange set of characters.

Ryou, a young reporter for "an old-fashioned magazine," moves into a new apartment and after bragging how lucky he is to at last have an apartment with a bath, he realizes the walls are paper thin and you can heavy everything, and I mean, everything that happens in the next unit. He soon develops a fantasy life with the woman next door, one he has never met. He visualizes her apartment and what she must look like and enjoys a rather solo sex life based on these fantasies.

The movie is clearly focused on male heterosexual sexual fantasy and seems to be filmed from Ryou’s perspective. This focus is reinforced by using Aoi Sola – a hardcore Japanese star as the Satsuki, the female focus of his attention.

His obsession reaches what we may see as stalking level; he has structured his day around her schedule, found out where she works and arranged to bump into her at every occasion. He has attached a listening device to her wall and steals her rubbish to see what she eats. He doesn’t come across as an especially likeable character, rather obsessive, neurotic and maybe a bit disturbed. Yet, he is the milder of the two male characters !

Satsuki is receiving constantly harassing phone calls; they are accelerating in intensity and seem to be becoming threats. Every time she gets one of these calls she phones her boyfriend Yuta whom arrives to have rough sex with her. It seems Yuta is also a bit strange, he sustains a distant relationship with her and intimacy only seems to occur when she has been frightened by one of these calls and it is usually simply an excuse for a hard night of sex. He seems genuinely excited by her fear and terror.

As the perverted bidding war increases, Ryou sneaks into her apartment to find why his listening devices isn’t working and finds that her boyfriend has installed his own listening devices and a hidden camera. This is quite a bizarre scene, we have two voyeurs battling it out, vying for control of listening devices !

So now we have a bizarre scenario evolving where both characters are seemingly disturbed stalkers and I cannot see how either of them are likeable at all. Sure, we may identify with a little bit of voyeurism here and there, but the extent to which both characters go clearly is “unstable” territory and has moved from a simple lustful voyeurism to dangerous obsession.

Ryou follows Yuta and finds he monitors Satsuki, masturbating over the fear she experiences after he makes abusive calls. The weirdness increase as Yuta confronts Ryou and given him “permission” have sex Satsuki as long as it is in her room, he even offers money to emphasize the point (he obviously wants to watch).

Ryou decides to solve the problem and sets up a fake standover attempt in Satsuki’s room (using his friends as stand-ins) when she is away having dinner with him and Yuta is followed, harassed and beaten. He leaves his apartment and escapes but, of course, comes back to confront Satsuki. The climax is when Yuta and Ryou battle it out and as expected Ryou wins.

But is he really the nice guy, the hero ? Perhaps Yuta would not have snapped except that Ryou pushed him and played out a standover routine ? Sure Yuta is weird, but is Ryou any better, who’s to say how far his obsession could have gone….

In reality both men in this film come across as rather disturbed obsessives and as a romantic/sex comedy the film hence fails miserably.

The final scene is where Satsuki realizes that Ryou has been listening in and monitoring her but does she care ? Of course not, she runs naked into his arms...

No accounting for taste or common sense, ah ?? She rejects one boyfriend for being a dangerously neurotic voyeur and chooses another one who is not only the same but manipulated his way into her life.

This is a truly weird film which is not especially romantic or funny, not especially sexy, there is little female nudity (strange considering the career profile of the major actress) and the male masturbation fantasies are not especially attractive either. In the end none of the characters are likeable and I am not really sure what this film was attempting to be – comedy, sex romp, fantasy ? Who knows.

I suggest you watch it and make up your own mind.