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The Latin title translates as “The Fabric of the Human Body,” a somewhat poetic take on a topic that’s literally visceral, meaning it’s about actual viscera. A previous documentary by the directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel covered Issei Sagawa, the man who famously killed and partially ate a woman in France, and their latest offering, filmed in a French hospital, is equally obsessed with getting up-close-and-personal with the guts of the matter as it’s mostly about what’s revealed inside of us as the body undergoes surgical procedures that are by definition intrusive. At the same time, and perhaps by design, the movie underscores the precarity of the French health care system, which we learn is distressingly underfunded and understaffed, thus intensifying the dramatic elements of the operations with the suggestion that the surgeons don’t always know exactly what they’re doing.

The filmmakers’ approach is both disarmingly simple and purposely overbearing. Surgical procedures are depicted in closeup with the soundtrack capturing the give-and-take among the medical personnel involved, and if sometimes the jargon gets a bit thick, the conversational tone indicates unmistakably the moment-to-moment temperament of the doctors and nurses, which can veer widely from carefree to panicked and back again. Castaing-Taylor and Paravel seem to have chosen the most wince-inducing procedures—an eyball being sliced open to insert a new lens, a penis’s urethra being drilled by a device set to what the surgeon refers to as the “Kalishnikov setting”—as if to drive home the notion that this is what these professionals have to deal with every day, often for hours at a time, so it’s no wonder they become inured to the damage inflicted. At one point, a medical technician, complaining of the hospital’s “downsizing” policy, remarks on his colleagues’ “carpe diem attitude toward life,” and the line becomes a leitmotif. “It’s kind of a game,” one surgeon says about the decisions he has to make while his hands are wrist-deep in someone’s bowels (“a plumbing problem”); while another, caught in a rare moment of self-doubt, reflects on the pointlessness of extending lives. A discussion over a removed and in tact breast indicates the limits of oncology as a diagnostic enterprise. “Chemotherapy ruined it,” someone says, to which another person replies, “That’s gynecology for you.”

With regard to this kind of contrast, the most dramatic scene depicts a Caesarean, which combines the frantic (“I can’t feel the sac”) and the ecstatic (“My kitten!” exclaims the nurse when the baby finally cries). De Humani is rarely beautiful, given the context of its visual explorations, but it is often wondrous in its mission to chart as much fleshly territory as possible. That the filmmakers relate the corporeal to the emotional so effectively signals a desire to get at the existential dilemma of medical science. For all the expertise on display the human form’s job is to decay, an aspect that is highlighted by ongoing shots of two elderly and cognitively impaired women navigating the halls of a hospital together, seemingly on their way to nowhere. It’s not exactly a revelation that we’ll all be joining them at some point, but given the setting these scenes exert a profound power.

In French. Opens Nov. 22 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551), Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608). 

De Humani Corporis Fabrica home page in Japanese

The latest in a series of German movies on the theme of neuro-divergency was a box office hit in its native land, and it’s easy to see why. Clearly a mainstream effort, Weekend Rebels is based on a popular blog-turned-bestseller that approaches autism with disarming frankness leavened by a comic touch that’s obviously designed to acclimatize viewers to the behavior of people on the spectrum. In that regard, the filmmakers deserve props, but the production itself exudes a kind of harmless predictability, as if the story’s development had been structured as a power point presentation. In fact, in one scene a character says to another that his explanation of how he deals with his son’s autism sounds like “a TED talk.”

The character in question is Mirco (Florian David Fitz), the father of ten-year-old Jason (Cecilio Andresen), who has Asperger’s, a condition that mostly manifests in extreme OCD tantrums. To the casual outsider, Jason’s behavior is that of a very spoiled child, and thus Mirco and his wife, Fatime (Aylin Tezel), are subjected to withering looks whenever Jason acts out in public. Explaining that Jason is autistic does little to encourage tolerance, which is probably an anti-PC way of looking at the issue anyway, so both parents learn to cope with these situations the best they can, but Fatime has to address the problem on an almost constant basis since Mirco’s job as a national sales manager for a fast food chain keeps him on the road almost constantly. Eventually, Fatime has a kind of breakdown and Mirco is forced to confront his employer with an ultimatum, which she miraculously gives in to, offering Mirco not only a management position that allows him to go home at 5 every day, but also a pay raise. With his weekends now completely free, he endeavors to spend more time with Jason and quickly realizes what his wife had to deal with, including battling with the public education system to prevent Jason from being transferred to a school for students with “special needs.” The thing about Jason is that he understands his condition, as well as the cultural atmosphere surrounding it (“I’m not Rainman,” he screams at one point), and in his inherent stubbornness refuses to surrender to the social slot in which the establishment, regardless of how well-meaning its intentions, tries to place him. Since the same OCD tendencies that make his parents’ lives difficult also focus his energies on certain interests, mainly astrophysics, once his attentions are engaged he is willing to negotiate his behavior in order to pursue those interests. When a classmate asks what his favorite football team is, he is stumped, and Mirco uses this dilemma as a basis for bonding. They will attend games for all 56 German football clubs so that Jason can decide which one will be his favorite.

As a promotional medium for German professional football, the movie works extremely well, though those of us who aren’t necessarily into the niceties of the sport may also find the scenes of boisterous fans (which freak out Jason at first) and complicated explanations of regional sports peculiarities less than engaging. But the premise lends itself to the high drama that often marks interactions with people on the spectrum, since the visceral experience of attending live soccer games intensifies the problems that many people with Asperger’s have in public situations. However, in the movie these effective dramatic moments are often spoiled by the peppy pop song soundtrack and a style of montage-heavy editing that reduces everything to a bland porridge of sameness. As Jason himself states at one time while describing how the universe was formed, “chaos is now accepted by scientists as part of nature,” and it might have been more to the movie’s benefit had the filmmakers themselves adopted that credo.

In German and English. Opens Nov. 15 in Tokyo at Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015).

Weekend Rebels home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Wiedemann & Berg Film GMBH/Sevenpictures Film GMBH

Straightforwardly a film about loneliness and the search for connection, Pablo Berger’s animated feature, based on a graphic novel by Sara Varon, eschews dialogue for a rich sound design that complements its colorful, densely built 2D visuals. The setting is Brooklyn in the mid-1980s, which is populated by animals of all species and ethnic peculiarities, not a human among them. Our protagonist is Dog, a seemingly under-employed canine living in a nice studio apartment overlooking a busy street. Despite the clamor and constant movement that goes on outside his building, he mostly sits around eating processed food and watching television alone. One day he sees a late night ad for companions and orders one. What arrives is a generic silver-colored robot, which requires some assembly. Without much ado, Dog now has a friend, who we assume is programmed for such a task, and yet genuine affection is equally offered on both sides. 

The idyll is spoiled by an accident of timing. The two friends go to the beach at Coney Island, and after Robot unwisely enters the water his parts rust up and he can’t be moved by Dog, who goes home to fetch tools and manuals, returning the next day only to find the beach closed for the season. Unable to enter he goes home crestfallen, leaving Robot to dream about someday being found and/or reunited with his friend, as Dog tries in vain every trick in the book to make those dreams a reality. The kick here is the dreams, which range from all-out fantasy to musical numbers to old Hollywood-style melodrama. As Robot lays under the accumulating sand, Dog gets on with his life, forges other friendships that fade in due time. When the season begins again he rushes to Coney Island and finds that Robot is gone, the only evidence of his existence a piece of his hand. The viewer knows, however, that Robot has been picked up by an illicit metal scavenger who has sold what’s left of him to a scrap yard, which, in turn, sells the parts to a hobbyist who endeavors to put him back together with other parts cannibalized from different devices. 

The story, whose inertia has more to do with vibes than with plotting, doesn’t necessarily go where you expect it to go, and while the the movie is steeped in non-realism, the situation that unfolds is not only believable, but sublimely affecting because it makes so much sense emotionally. At once heartbreaking and humane (despite the fact that there isn’t a human in sight), Robot Dreams is the kind of movie that gives sincerity of purpose a good name.

Opens Nov. 8 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya 03-5468-5551).

Robot Dreams home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 Arcadia Motion Pictures S.L., Lokiz Films A.I.E., Noddles Production SARL, Les Films du Worso SARL