Confessions

Confessions
Tetsuya Nakashima | Japan | 2010.
106 min

If there is one acknowledged fact about revenge films it is that they can be brutally violent, sometimes unflinchingly so. When a Japanese film comes along on this subject, you know you just have to see it. Confessions is a strange film to describe and even riskier one to recommend probably because it is both from Japan and revolves around an extensively elaborate revenge scenario.

The opening act is set entirely within a seventh grade classroom and features a lengthy monologue by Yuko, a school teacher about to resign. The film is in fact a series of confessions by five different characters and while these are fairly structured and linear in the beginning (they follow one after the other, almost Rashomon like), these quickly intersperse as the film and its plot becomes more complex, turning into a maze of monologues. Yuko’s confession to the class has to do with the recent murder of her daughter, a crime she blames on two students within her class, whose identity she claims to know and whom she labels ‘Student A’ and ‘Student B’. When the class finds out who these students are, things turn chaotic and cruel fairly quickly and the grim proceedings that follow keep you immersed.

As far as sticking to conventions go, nothing in Confessions is as expected. It is a highly unusual, original piece of exploitation Asian cinema, the kind that blends macabre humour, darkly grim characters and an uncertain, almost epic finale that the entire plot seems to organically build towards. Director Tetsuya Nakashima’s hypnotic visuals are both cinematically eye popping and overly stylized and while this gives the film a unique somber mood, drenched in black, blue and grays, it also calls attention to itself as well.

Quite ingeniously though, the script masks a point about the nihilism inherent in the youth of today (especially in Japan) and how they seem apathetic to morality or the need to be answerable for their actions. Of course, the entire plot, from the many revelations, to character motivations and even the convoluted revenge angle are exaggerated to their fullest potential. This allows the film to refute any deeper analysis of it for it is neither sophisticated nor is it shallow – it just is. In some ways, the film feels like a cross breed of South Korea’s Oldboy and Japan’s very own, very violent Battle Royale, and though both those films might have been inspirations in some capacity or the other, Confessions, despite its over done and muddling conclusion, stands firmly on its own as one of the years more strikingly unique films.