The Enchantment

Developed in workshops at the Sundance Institute and winner of a major prize at Tokyo Film Festival, The Enchantment is Nagasaki’s most polished thriller – and one of his most disturbing. Tokyo psychiatrist Sotomura becomes fascinated by his patient Miyako, who claims to have been assaulted by her lesbian lover but cannot say why she feels she needs treatment. He intervenes to protect her when she takes a cab driven by another of his patients, a man with a history of schizophrenia, and is later undeterred by the news that the driver has been found stabbed to death in his taxi. Then, when Miyako stabs him, his fascination blooms into obsession… The blend of sensuality and irrationality isn’t new for Nagasaki, but The Enchantment has a narcotic perfume all its own. The tone is closer to Patricia Highsmith than to pulp. It’s set in obviously real offices, streets and apartments which seem increasingly surreal. Eventually, when the characters enter their fantasies to confront their primal traumas, the locations actually blur together to become conceptual spaces of the mind. Nagasaki’s own obsessions get a good airing too, from the exchange of identities to a skewed sexual triangle, and the film makes killer use of a neon ad for Coca-Cola. —Tony Rayns