Five tales of desperate individuals in contemporary Japan gradually intertwine in this bizarre independent film. In one tale, a man repeatedly kills his wife, only for her to return from the dead with increasing supernatural powers each time. In another tale, an advertising executive tries to make the funniest commercial ever, but keeps failing. In yet another tale, three teens on a crime spree gradually accept their latent homosexuality. In a further tale, a financially troubled father is permanently hypnotised into acting like a bird after his hypnotist is murdered. Finally, Vinnie Jones as a hit-man provides the link between the first four tales. The film is very well edited with lots of attention to music and sound; the ad exec's eyelids flutter to the music beats, Jones taps his feet and fingers in rhythm and so on. The brightly coloured sets (especially the wife killer's home) are great too. For all its ambition though, 'Survive Style 5+' is incredibly uneven. The ad exec tale falls flat but the other segments work for wildly different reasons. The film is whimsical and touching when focused on the hypnotised man and how his doting kids cope; it is darkly comic when focused on the wife-killer; and it is intriguing one when focused on the closeted friends who seem on the verge of spilling all. What exactly what the title means is anybody's guess, and it is hard to think of any overall themes that link the tales together. The film is, however, refreshingly offbeat and uncanny with nary a boring moment to be had. The way the wife-killer and hypnotised man's tales link together at the end is also simply sublime.
Review of Survive Style 5+
