Visitor Q DVD Review

Kiyoshi (Kenichi Endo) is a failed television reporter, whose career hit rock bottom when he had his microphone inserted where the sun don't shine, live on air. His wife Keiko (Shungiku Uchida), a heroin addict who turns to prostitution to pay for her habit, is viciously beaten on a daily basis by their teenage son Takuya (Jun Mutô), who himself suffers torment at the hands of school bullies who regularly attack the family home with fireworks. A mysterious visitor (Kazushi Watanabe) makes himself at home with the seriously dysfunctional family, after whacking Kiyoshi about the head with a large stone. Kiyoshi presents an idea to his TV producer for a new documentary but when she rejects it, Kiyoshi sees it as a personal attack on him, and fuelled by his daughters taunts about his premature ejaculation, goes about reclaiming his masculinity. Meanwhile, the visitor awakens Keiko's sexuality by showing her the pleasures of spurting lactose, and Takuya's antagonists are about to get taught the dangers of playing with fireworks.

There have been plenty of films dealing with social taboos, some hard hitting serious messages, some using controversial material for shock value, and then there's Visitor Q. The film opens with Kiyoshi having sex with a pretty young prostitute, who just happens to be his teenage daughter, who's run away from home. Miike unflinchingly gets incest out of the way, then tackles drug addiction, rape, murder, necrophilia, extreme milking, shit, piss and dismemberment.Visitor Q is a deliciously offensive black comedy, surreal, perverse and very entertaining. There might even be some kind of message about domestic family life in there somewhere, but what really has to be addressed here though is Shungiku Uchida's nipples. I've never seen anything like them, they're huge, massively long things that could take your eye out from the other side of the room. I'm wondering if she got the part because of her nipples or if the story was written around them when they were discovered? I think they've disturbed me. A masterpiece of deviant cinema.

Visitor Q. 2001

Directed by Takashi Miike