The Pinkie

Since they were five years old, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko—the ugliest girl in the village. Her boundless love drives her to surgically alter her own face to fit his tastes, yet he remains uninterested. Ryosuke pursues fleeting romances—for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. When he learns of their affair, the gangster boss has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger lands in Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, hoping to possess him—almost for herself. And this is only the opening five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. As in her previous shorts, the director—who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game—blends genres and techniques: from science fiction to gangster cinema, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR