Kumiko Hoshizaki’s “Akane Sasu Heya” is the story of Maki, a 20-something temp who is sick of her boring job and life in general. The rather bizarre solution she comes up with is to conceive a child behind her boyfriend’s back. Makoto Nagahisa offers the much more impressionistic “Frog.” The story meanders around a bunch of unrelated characters, using experimental techniques like repeated scenes, hallucinatory visuals, blurred shots and disconnected sounds. Lastly, we have “Bouquet Garni,” a much more conventional work from director Junpei Hatano. The plot is centered on a reporter, the relative of a kidnapping victim, and a woman who is obsessed with the case.
Early summer, Keiichi had just moved to a remote mountain village. As he becomes close friends with a group of girls, he was enjoying his life in the village. However when he starts to become suspicious that his friends may be deeply involved in successive murders that occur every summer, the situation around Keiichi gradually starts to turn into something more sinister.
In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
There has been a surge in the number of people killing themselves; a mysterious DVD is found on the bodies of the victims... Nozomi falls under the spell of a deadly cult. Yousuke, the policeman she is dating, soon realizes that the cult has something to do with the DVD. Then one day all trace of the group disappear--along with Nozomi.
Kurosaki is an erotic novelist who uses his editor and a hired model to act out scenarios in his living room to use for inspiration in his writing. His wife Shizuko calls him a pervert but on the inside, she feels physically neglected. She tries to make him jealous, while also going after what she desires with someone else.
While her husband is in prison doing time, Tamaki, the wife of a yakuza capo, runs her spouse’s gang with an iron hand. Meanwhile, Makoto, her younger sister, marries a member of a rival band after being raped by him. The two sisters, united by blood ties but married to enemy yakuzas, will ultimately have to decide whose side they’re on.