Desert Moon

Desert Moon (2001)

Genres - Drama  |   Run Time - 130 min.  |   Countries - Japan  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Jonathan Crow

Following up on his epic masterpiece Eureka, director Shinji Aoyama creates this mediation on spiritual and economic malaise in contemporary Japanese society. Nagai (Hiroshi Mikami) is an American-educated businessman desperately trying to keep his cutting edge software company afloat amid shareholder discontent and intra-company feuding. His emotional state is only made more fragile when his wife Akira (Maho Toyota) abruptly leaves him. Feeling lost and wayward in her own life, she returns to her parent's home in the country with their infant daughter (Yukiko Ikari). Feeling vulnerable and lonely, Nagai obsessively watches old videotapes of happier times with his wife and child. Enter into this domestic melodrama Keechie (Shuji Kashiwabara), an emotionally unbalanced drifter with barely suppressed hatred towards his father and anyone in authority. Keechie transfers his patricidal obsessions onto Nagai and soon insinuates himself into their lives as Nagai ventures to the country in order to make amends with his wife. This film was screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.