What I'm Watching #209

Watched this film from Japan today. We have been taught that Japanese culture is very reserved and polite -- if so, Japanese cinema channels its alter-ego. "Schoolboy Crush" is about a mythical island nation on the rim of Asia where androgynous boys rule the known world and vie for each other's attention and sexual favors....er, I mean it's about a group of teenaged boys going to an exclusive, jesuit run private school somewhere in the Japanese countryside. Well, actually, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. There's sex for hire, sex for comfort, sex for punishment, sex denied, sex for blackmail, and a suicide to spice things up. And a creepy aside, one of the leads, Atsumi Kanno, looks a whole lot like Michael Jackson... which makes one wonder if MJJ's real goal wasn't to become white, but a Japanese "anime" character. It's really hard to know exactly what to say about this film that's just serious...it makes me think that of all the cultures I have been exposed to in the world, the Japanese is perhaps the most enigmatic.