CONFESSIONS
DVD region 2. Third Window Films

Like Aftershock, this film was in the long list for the 2011 Oscars, but failed to make the cut for the final selection – a fact that should tell you (as if you didn’t already know) that such awards are a farce. I can guarantee you that no winner this year (The King’s Speech? The Social Network? Are you serious?) will come anywhere close to the stunning raw power of either of the two rejects.

From Kamikaze Girls director Tetsuya Nakashima, Confessions is a bleak, emotionally charged tale of murder and revenge, told in a uniquely Japanese way – I can’t see a US remake of this in the immediate future. It opens with a bravura thirty-minute section that almost works as a stand-alone film, with teacher Takako Matsu telling her class about the death of her child – a death caused by two pupils in that very class. As the story unfolds and the true horror is revealed, you wonder where the film can go from here, but in fact it’s only getting started, as the killing and its aftermath are revealed from various viewpoints in a non-linear manner until events reach an extraordinary conclusion that wraps things up in a stunning visual spectacular.

With some effective use of music by Radiohead and Japanese band Boris, a visual palette that is suitably muted and powerful performances from all involved, this story – effectively about the making of a murderer and the social inadequacy of the sociopath – is wholly gripping, sometimes emotionally shattering and continually inventive and unique.

You’ll be hard pressed to see anything better this year.

Third Window's DVD offers an impressive package of extras - the main one being a 70 minute making-of documentary that charts the seemingly torturous production (the perfectionist director often driving his young cast to breaking point it would seem) and intricate post-production development. There are also interviews with the schoolkids from the cast and several trailers.

DAVID FLINT

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