Facets Multimedia
1517 W. Fullerton Ave.
Chicago IL 60614
800.331.6197

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CHARLES COLEMAN
Film Programmer for Facets Cinémathèque

Read his feature in the Chicago Reader

September 2010

The Facets Cinémathèque is located at 1517 W. Fullerton Ave. in Chicago. For more information on films playing in the Cinémathèque, please call 773-281-4114. To order advance tickets online, visit the TicketWeb website by clicking here.


Chicago Theatrical
Premiere New from Hirokazu Kore-eda!

AIR DOLL
(Kûki ningyô)

A parable about loneliness and alienation in present-day Tokyo, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll features the unlikeliest of heroines. Well-known for such contemplative films about human nature as After Life, Distance and Nobody Knows, Kore-eda returns with possibly his most surprising work to date, an anti–fairy tale about an inflatable doll that suddenly comes to life. Korean actress Bae Doo-na, whose roles in such films as Linda, Linda, Linda and The Host have made her a cult icon, stars as the eponymous sex doll, bought by a quiet loner for companionship. Emerging into life, she escapes his hermit's apartment and what she discovers, however, is a city of isolation, where both men and women have retreated into their own fantasies. Creating a parallel life away from the apartment, she takes a job in a video store and falls hopelessly in love with Junichi, the video store clerk, but a real-life turn of events make her question whether this new existence is actually feasible.

In Air Doll, Kore-eda has made a poetic meditation in which the use of magic realism allows him to deliver a melancholic and philosophical critique of contemporary social life: "Can people fulfill their own emptiness? What is the meaning of life? What is a human being?" Taiwanese cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bing (In the Mood for Love, Flowers of Shanghai) gives the pop-gloss of 21st-century life a particularly ethereal, floating-world allure, adding further power to this moving portrait of love, loneliness and companionship.

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2009, 125 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles. An Official Selection for Un Certain Regard at the Cannes International Film Festival.





Official site (in Japanese)

Director interview (TimeOut)   Director interview (Onion)   Director interview (IonCinema)

Midnight Eye     Hollywood Reporter     Japan Times     NPR     NewCity Chicago

Chicago Reader        

Showtimes:
Fri., Sept. 17 at 6:30 & 9 pm
Sat.-Sun., Sept. 18-19 at 1:30, 4, 6:30 & 9 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Sept. 20-23 at 6:30 & 9 pm



Tickets: