Kinta and Ginji (2019)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2019
	Director: Takuya Dairiki, Takashi Miura
	Actors: Takuya Dairiki, Takashi Miura
	Country: J
	Genre: Comedy
	Conditions of visioning: 09.06.2020, NCF2020, 14" computer screen
Synopsis: Kinta and Ginji are best buddies. Sometimes they get on each other’s nerves, but they don’t hold a grudge for long. They are way too straightforward for that. Every other day, they meet up and roam the fields and forests, lie around in the grass, or make music. Just two normal guys – but one of them is a tanuki (racoon dog), the other a robot. Things get even more curious when other talking entities and objects appear!
Review: This is a very experimental movie presented in the VISIONS section of the Nippon Connection 2020 Festival. Basically two friends shooting scenes with a miniDV camera. This explains the lack of everything and the poor image quality. But that's not the point, in fact the image quality is irrelevant. Early on, this movie reminded me of Quentin Tarantino, because of the dialogs about small things in life, and which will have no impact on the main story whatsoever. This is something which is lacking in most movie, because every dialog has to contribute, but this characteristic made Tarantino's success. The whole of Kinta and Ginji is small talk in fact, and a weakness is that it doesn't have a main story, which makes it harder to watch as it goes. There is some conclusion (spoiler, highlight to read: they enter a fog so they think they died and then they come back), but it hardly makes a difference. But there are some hilarious scenes, I will come back to that later. The second connection I made is with the French Electro band Daft Punk (Dog and Robot costumes, the Homework album someone?), in particular their 2006 arty movie Electroma, which they released at the top of their fame, has a big budget and looks good, but is even less entertaining than Kinta and Ginji and not funny at all. So the concept of the movie is funny, as are the cheap costumes, but the best are the dialogs and sometimes juxtaposition of scenes. I have collected the favorite two scenes from each of the viewers from our group: Jo: the little song about peaches and insects made me burst of laughter, as did the little dance the dog does. Raf: the discussion about turtles and the Rocky movie (do their really breathe from their butts?) and the unexpected apparition from a stray rhinoceros, apparently filmed through the bars of a zoo Rudi: the static and narrow shots composing 95% of the movie, and the fact that there is just a handful of scenes depicting some kind of civilization. The rest takes place in deserts or forests. Alex: the dam scene, and ow they insult each other while keeping the same tone. In the end, we concluded that the movie is as if it were made by children: enjoying little things in life like polishing rocks or climbing trees, lying to each other to appear better, and telling more or less interesting stories one after the other with no precise goal. Warning: for hardcore fans of Japanese experimental Cinema only!
Rating: 4 /10