Though Japanese director Sion Sono has built up a cult following with his more extreme fare - Suicide Club, Exte, Love Exposure, etc - the weird stuff is just one side of this very prolific and complex director - a man who is actually at least as well known in his native Japan as a serious poet as he is a film maker. And Sono's dramatic side is coming out with his newest film, Be Sure To Share, which is about to have its world premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival. Here's how they describe it:
Featuring pop star Akira from the band EXILE in one of his first motion picture performances, BE SURE TO SHARE is a quiet meditation on death and the relationship between fathers and sons. Director and actor Eiji Okuda plays a tough-as-nails father who makes the Great Santini look like a wimp. Now, diagnosed with cancer he’s trapped in the hospital and his wife and son (Akira) spend their days visiting and trying to keep his spirits up. Just when it looks like he’s about to recover, Akira finds out that he has cancer too, and that his father may out-live him. Determined not to worry anyone, he keeps it to himself and vows that he’ll beat his disease.BE SURE TO SHARE isn’t an easy-to-swallow disease-of-the-week movie about fathers and sons. Sono opens the film up and makes it an essay, colored with regret, about how we’re constantly running after each other, and never catching up. We’d say it will break your heart, but Sono might object to such an easy sentiment. So how about this: by the time this movie is over, you’ll feel like your chest has been cracked in two.
Both Sono and star Eiji Okuda will be attending the New York premiere and you can find the English subtitled trailer below the break.
Wow. Becoming a father has really given me a weakness for stuff like this. I can't believe I teared up watching the trailer!
It looks like a tv-film...a bad one.
I'll give it a chance once it gets a cheap and English subtitled DVD release but the absence of suicidal schoolgirls, amputees and acrobatic panty photographers worries me. Sono fascinates me, though, and I wish more of his older films would get released in subtitled form already. Where's that Canadian HAZARD disc?