Harry here... LAUNDRY sounds good. I did LAUNDRY today and it had nothing to do with that money that Quint brought back from Vegas, no this was actual London specific clothing so I have proper wares when hangin' with my droogs. Listen up to Joe Slutt... this sounds like LAUNDRY might be worth a spin or two...
Again, I don't know if this is cool news, but ...
My name is Joe Slutt and in the past few months I've sent in reports from the Mifed Film Market and the New York Film Festival. The American Film Market in Los Angeles is the film industry equivalent to a bake sale, although you might mistake it for a fire sale, given its virtual buffet of zero-budget productions starring barely-were actors slumming in beyond-high-concept narratives that always involve a floppy disk for some reason.
Roger Corman really rose to the occasion this year: Concorde / New Horizons offers both "Raptor," a crummy-looking dinosaur film starring Eric Roberts, and "Shakedown," a Ron Perlman vehicle where ... I'll refer to the press materials ... "in the epicenter of a devastating Los Angeles earthquake, terrorists and bank robbers battle over a deadly supervirus." One only wonders what supporting cast member Fred Dryer has to do with all of this.
These films will likely be clunking up the shelves of the Blockbuster Video down the street in a matter of months, but what happens to those oddball foreign films that only get a few promotional screenings here in the United States before disappearing into obscurity when no one secures the stateside distribution rights?
This was probably my one and only chance to see a film like "Laundry," a 2001 production from Japan about a child-like goof-ball named Teru (Yosuke Kubozuka) who is hired to stand as sort of a security watchman at a coin-operated laundromat that his grandmother owns. Local perverts have been ransacking the washers and stealing the undergarments of the female clientele, so Teru takes his job quite seriously, lording over the establishment with a sort of benevolent glee.
Teru's also something of a 'special' fellow, having fallen into an open manhole as a toddler and forced to live a child-like existence of wide-eyed naivete as a result of his head injuries. He is quick to make friends with his regular customers, which include a down-and-out pugilist who loses a much-publicized bout and retreats into one of the tumble-dryers in shame.
One day, a mysterious young woman named Mizue (played by Koyuki) enters the laundromat to wash a dress but absent-mindedly leaves the laundered item behind. An employee par excellence, Teru is determined to return the dress to her and tracks her down at her apartment flat.
Mizue proves to be an intensely lonely young woman who fetches him tea and holds hands with him in silence for minutes on end. They find they both share an apocalyptic fixation upon the swollen, stories-tall gasoline tanks at a nearby refinery which seem ready to burst at any moment. On the brink of a nervous breakdown, she decides to take a bus back to her hometown and moves back in with her middle-class mother and sister.
Mizue flashes back to her younger years, working in a Tokyo flower-shop and in love with a bad-boy bicycle messenger who often compares her to Audrey Hepburn. Not knowing who Hepburn is, she decides to rent Steven Spielberg's "Always," wondering aloud why he would compare her to such an "elegant old lady." When he reveals that he is actually married to the mother of his newborn son, Mizue copes with her rejection by developing an acute case of kleptomania and stuffing the ill-gotten booty into a letterbox near the train station where she was handed her walking papers.
Back in the present day, a vaguely unsympathetic gentleman shows up to announce that unseen parties have foreclosed on the laundromat and intend to put the property up for sale. Lacking employment and a sense of purpose, Teru hitchhikes his way to Mizue's hometown with the help of a brutish, alcoholic pigeon trainer named Sally (Takashi Naito) who runs a company called White Pigeon Ceremonial Releases. Teru finds a miserable Mizue working for the public transit authority and abusing sleeping pills.
Sally, a grudgingly generous man with romantic longings of his own, decides to take the wayward souls under his wing and instructs them in the art of releasing pigeons at weddings and special events. The succession of nuptial proceedings prompts Teru to facetiously ask for Mizue's hand in marriage, which she facetiously accepts. Their sickening affections prompt Sally to bequeath his estate to these two misfits and tour the world in search of "a blonde woman with real big tits." Shopping for housewares for their new digs, a fateful trip to a neighborhood antique store one afternoon forces Mizue to confront both her feelings for Teru and her kleptomaniac impulses as she makes a decision that places their future together in jeopardy.
I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed "Laundry." I am also surprised by my decision to recommend the film without ironic reservations to foreign film enthusiasts looking for an almost absurdly sincere romantic melodrama. This is the sort of film that the Miramax of yore would dribble into limited release right around Valentine's Day; in all fairness, "Laundry" has yet to even be released in its country of origin. It lacks any sensational content that would endear itself to a new generation of art-house moviegoers seeking "totally extreme" thrills and spills, but it does offer an original and affecting love story between two awesomely mismatched, sad-sack souls.
Admittedly, the entire film carries the weight of a protracted and sometimes all-too-evident metaphor: we are all dirtied by the toils and tribulations of the world and the very process of laundry ˆ in a laundromat, a bath tub or a rainstorm ˆ is an act of purification. But beneath that cornball paraffin shell, "Laundry" is also an individualized look at how people combat loneliness by retreating into such routines. The symbolic import that these characters place on material representations of happier times is often their only reminder of joy within their own self-constructed worlds of self-loathing and denial. When Teru and Mizue enter into a benign and sexless relationship that brings deeper meaning to their lives, it's an oddly touching achievement for these introverted creatures of habit.
It certainly made me wince once or twice to think of what would happen if Hollywood ever attempted to remake "Laundry." All one needs to do is compare the fart-gag directorial stylings of Garry Marshall's "The Other Sister" (which explores similar subject matter) to rookie helmer Junichi Mori's wry and mannered approach to the material to appreciate the earnestness of this production. The simple and stark piano score by Zentoro Watanabe is also a valued asset to the film.
For those of you who missed AFM 2002, "Laundry" will be receiving a proper west coast premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival this week in San Jose, California. Tickets are still available for a screening on Thursday, February 28th and you find out more information about the film by clicking on the following website:
