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This odd haunting Japanese film gripped me from start to finish but was actually very long at 2 hours in length. It plays out like a Twilight Zone episode but pads out with slow scenes, painful dialogue and shoegaze acting and patient camera work. The acting is all up to main protagonist Bae Doona who is an inflatable doll that comes to life. The first scene shows the perverse lonely owner having a conversation at the dinner table with the doll he calls Nozomi, and then takes her to bed. It is uncomfortable viewing as the doll really looks lifeless and made of plastic with staring eyes and frozen expression. When the doll moves after the man has finished with her the next morning, it is chilling. The doll turns to real life Doona and she looks like something from an Anime film. She is beautiful, inquisitive, and hopelessly lost. In secret she ventures outside and in wonderment walks around the city experiencing new sensations; the smells, the textures and conversations are all fascinating through her eyes. The camera follows her into a DVD store where she actually gets a job as an assistant. There she meets a fellow assistant and they fall in love. He finds out she is a doll when she snags herself and air leaves her body. In an eroticised scene the assistant blows through her plug/ navel and breathes air into her body. Later this act would backfire and turn both their worlds to darkness.

I do not wish to give away anymore but the film does descend into some very dark territory that surprised me as the opening half is actually quite poetically beautiful. The cinematography is sumptuous and lovingly focuses on the doll's expressions and bewilderment. The story is a take on the Pinnochio theme, Nozomi even meets her creator in a Blade Runner like scene, because the doll wants "more life", to be a real girl and discover real emotions. It is sad when we see her staring at all the plastic bodies realising she is only another toy for someone else pleasure. The film is a fractured fairy tale but it is definitely designed for adults. One specific scene is quite disturbing with visceral imagery that has stayed with me for a while. Also the movie has an air of hope but is nevertheless infused with a depressing worldview; that the world can offer nothing but hopelessness unless you are willing to succumb to the system and integrate into the life that has been mapped out for us. There is an existential theme and the cycle of life and death are explored in powerful thought provoking scenes. The theme of discarding burnable garbage is prevalent, as is the theme of finding a heart that causes us to lie and feel pain. The film is overall melancholy, depicting soulless citylife and the emptiness of loneliness for those who are different. Nozomi is just as lonely as her owner and it is a sad state of affairs when she finds herself replaced so easily, almost like a divorced woman seeing her husband with another woman. The film may make a statement of empty relationships and disposable love, like burnable garbage.

The movie causes us to question the big questions of existence, our purpose, what is life and the human condition. The ending is poignant and quite moving with some misce-en-scene of surreal imagery that may be interpreted in a number of ways. It is not family viewing and Doona spends quite some time of the film in her birthday suit, but it is never overdone and her sexual encounters are as empty as a prostitute's. There are some powerful scenes that show Nozomi awakening to humanity but the understated performance of Doona is the real drawcard to this oddity; she is elegant beauty. A one of a kind film, better perhaps than other doll obsession movies such as 'Lifesize', 'Artificial Intelligence' and 'Lars and the Real Girl'. Well worth watching as a curio, and a thought provoking conversation piece, but take caution due to the nudity, visceral imagery and psychological unsettling nature of the film.