Vibrator

Named Best Japanese Film of the Year by the Japan Times and noted Japanese film authority Donald Richie, Vibrator is a remarkably affecting road movie brimming with cathartic intensity and bold eroticism.

Directed by international rising star Ryuichi Hiroki (I Am an S&M Writer, Tokyo Trash Baby, It’s Only Talk) and based on the acclaimed novel by Mari Akasaka, Vibrator follows Rei (the extraordinary Shinobu Terashima), a thirty-something freelance writer wrestling with psychological instability and a penchant for booze. One night while shopping for beer at an urban mini-mart, Rei runs into Okabe (Nao Omori, of Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer), a handsome young trucker pit stopping for gas and munchies. Impulsive and captivated, she climbs into his rig for an impromptu road trip. But what begins as a one night pick-up becomes a transformative journey of sexual and emotional self-discovery.

Psychologically raw and surprisingly uplifting, Vibrator represents a creative milestone for director Hiroki. With its frank approach to sexuality, relationships and personal liberation, the film is, as Tom Mes of the online cult Japanese film journal Midnight Eye writes, “one of the most universally resonant and downright important statements cinema today can hope to deliver.”