Re-Wind
It made quite a time I haven’t return to some of Sato’s work and today was the day, Re Wind or Celluloid Nightmares was the perfect film to reshape my taste for his art. I truly expected nothing from this film as it wasn’t necessarily one of his films I was the most excited for but I was so pleasantly surprised by the outcome for few reasons.
First, I think it is one of his most accessible work, of course it has its dose of unsettling scenes and weirdness but that remains a film among the Pinku Eigas genre so obviously. Buttt I feel the structure of the story was more classical, turning around the investigation of that Crime hunter seeking the truth behind those Snuff movies. The picture looks really clean to, nothing is really flamboyant or over the top like in The bedroom and the lighting ends up being very charming and subtle which I loved.
The plot itself is fascinating and serves as the gravitating point for the lingering themes of the film, Snuff movies are made and raise mystery, each characters nurture a morbid obsession over those transgressive films for different reasons, that being for revenge, curiosity or self pleasure which directly echos to us the viewers…. Coming to see Sato for what he does best: pushing boundaries. It ends up being a very ambiguous film about voyeurism and how we consume videos, pornography and extreme content. At the end, who is watching who exactly ? Even Sato seems aware of the role he plays in this industry’s surexploitation of those pictures and the character of the videographer solidifies this idea particularly. He films, directs, determines what he wants to see on screen, wether it’s soft or the most outrageous things you could see which inevitably parallels the role of the director who weirdly does the same thing, producing evocative perversion.
Of course Sato couldn’t do that without his own sense of style that elevates his ideas so beautifully, the way he films the blues of the city, the sky scrappers rising above soulless cranes, the loneliness of it all. The dizzy look of analog videos, the discarnated screaming voices and the splashing blood frights us deeply and places us into such an uncomfortable position without ever being able to look away. And finally the authenticity of the erotic scenes wrap the film perfectly to me, never being thrown to our face like it was often done in this genre, Sato doesn’t feel like fulfilling a quota of hot scenes. They flow naturally within the story, sometimes in the most troubling ways but in such tune with what the films tells that they shine for what they represent and not for what they are, ultimately transforming the entire film into a complete fetish experience.