Diary of a Shinjuki Thief

NEW 35mm PRINT!  │  Psychosexual provocateur Oshima is in peak creative and subversive form in Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, “one of his most important films” (David Dresser). The tale of a girlish boy, a boyish girl and the search for erotic fulfilment, the film is set against the youth-culture upheavals of the 1960s, with forays into Kabuki theatre, slapstick, cinéma vérité, and other modernist disruptions. “Disaffected, effeminate young dropout Birdie Hilltop (renowned graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo) shoplifts from a Tokyo bookstore and is caught by an aggressively flirtatious girl posing as a store clerk. After he confesses that stealing is the way he gets his rocks off, the two embark on an increasingly perverse affair. Dedicated to Jean Genet (as its title nods), Oshima’s deliriously horny celebration of youth revolts — sexual and political — is his most Godardian film in its patchwork shape and self-reflexive technique” (Aaron Hillis, Village Voice). “It is not fanciful to compare Shinjuku Thief with the Buñuel of L’Age d’Or, for it sees animal self-expression as being in brutal confrontation with social mores and the codes of Japanese living. Like Buñuel, Oshima is effortlessly shocking but always chaste, watching the vivid sexual performances of his characters as if they were insects” (David Thomson). Colour and B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 94 mins.