Bright Future

(Palm Pictures, 3.8.2005)

Twenty-something friends Mamoru and Yuji work in directionless jobs at a Tokyo factory and seem hopelessly unsociable. Mamoru spends the majority of his free time obsessing over his pet jellyfish, adapting his poisonous pet from a salt-water dependency to a fresh water one. Oddly enough, he gives the jellyfish to Yuji, who promises to keep up with its needs. After Mamoru mysteriously murders his boss' family and is imprisoned, Yuji is left to finish the process of integrating the jellyfish into unsalted waters. After an argument with Mamoru, Yuji smashes the aquarium containing the jellyfish, accidentally letting it enter the canals of Tokyo. As the film progresses, Yuri becomes more and more preoccupied with his underwater ally, now living and breeding in the city's waters.

Bright Future is a touching and haunting film that deals with the dissatisfaction of individuals (both young and old), as they live from one dreary day to the next. But the film is not without some hope for a bright future: one can see this in its final moments, which allude to the escape from a drab, contained existence to something that, hopefully, goes deeper.

There's an interesting indifference to genre conventions, throughout, and this often works to its advantage. The balance of humor and drama also helps the film's overall pace: lengthy, melancholic phases are interrupted by brief comic intervals.

Writer/director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Pulse) infuses the film with a strong sense of mystery, yet it all goes down fairly smooth, providing us with striking allusions and fitting social commentary. Takahide Shibanushi does an exceptional job as cinematographer, generating some truly elegant imagery and adding an eerie, profound lyricism to the jellyfish scenes.

Bright Future is presented in its original aspect ratio (1.78:1) and it's enhanced for widescreen televisions. The transfer is solid, doing justice to the film's overall look. Some darkly lit scenes look grainy and some other scenes seem soft but this appears to be part of the film's aesthetic. Minor complaints aside, the jellyfish sequences look spectacularly luminous.

As far as sound is concerned, the DVD contains 2.0 Dolby Surround in Japanese with English Subtitles: the music, sound effects, and dialogue all come across crisp and clear.

The main attraction on this disc is a 75 minute -- nearly the length of the film itself -- behind-the-scenes documentary. Appropriately titled "Ambivalent Future," this offers an in-depth look at the making of the film. Kurosawa discusses his influences, as well as his position in terms of genre (he wanted to make a non-genre film). This documentary is a great addition to the DVD and now fans can avoid the costly, two-disc, import edition with features that are only half subtitled.

Also included are the film's trailer, as well as trailers for two other Palm releases: Reconstruction and Dig!. The packaging is pretty swell: the film comes in a clear amaray case, sans insert. However, we do get the director's filmography and a short paragraph on the Dactylometra Pacifica (a poisonous jellyfish found off the coast of Japan).

If you've seen and enjoyed Bright Future then, by all means, purchase this edition. If you have yet to see the film, rent it first (and perhaps never return it). -- Neil Karassik