Over Your Dead Body review: Slow, contemplative, and classical.
Over Your Dead Body review
Director: Takashi Miike.
Cast: Ko Shibasaki, Ebizo Ichikawa, Miho Nakanishi, Hideaki Ito, Hitomi Katayama.
Certificate: N/A
Running Time: 90 minutes
Synopsis: A pair of kabuki theatre actors engage in an affair, only for the lines between the reality of their lives and the fiction on stage to become increasingly blurred.
Over Your Dead Body review
Takashi Miike has over 100 directorial credits to his name since 1991. That’s a hell of a lot of films, but what is even more impressive is the quantity and quality levels he has managed to sustain. Starting life in the popular Japanese direct to video market of the 1990s, Miike has brought about a fresh perspective to all his works, each one spiced up with unique moments of insanity. Lately, Miike has flexed his more restrained and mature muscles, with his films crossing over into the realms of critical praise and lavish production values. 13 Assassins and his remake of Hara-Kiri both showed that he wasn’t just for cult markets.
Over Your Dead Body, despite its confrontational title, continues in this manner, but is perhaps the most restrained of all of Miike’s films (for the most part at least). It is a delightfully calm horror that takes a lot more from the kabuki theatre setting than one may expect. We follow a set of kabuki actors who are engaged in affairs. Ironically the film is almost silent when in the real world sections, with sly nods and awkward body language signalling all we need to know. These moments stripped of almost all life, with scenes set in apartment buildings coming across as clinical with a large use of whites and greys in both set design and costumes.
Meanwhile, the play which the actors are rehearsing is where things really come to life. There is large amounts of dialogue, all coming across with lyrical and poetic delivery. The costumes are rich and vibrant, with the make-up speaking just as many volumes as the words. This is where frustrations, fears, and anxieties are all played out, fearlessly mixing art and reality. It is easy to forget to connect these two very different worlds, and see them as individual stories, so fortunately Miike reminds us by using cutaways to the production staff watching the play.
Over Your Dead Body is a very brave effort and is very close in tone to Miike’s masterpiece, Audition. Like that film, Miike tries to bore his audience to a certain degree. Some scenes are painfully slow, but this is the reflection of life and also aids in the enjoyment of the more surreal moments that have been hidden amongst normality. The pace is purposeful, but can also lead to a lack of investment in characters. This in itself may also be purposeful given that these are actors living out false lives away from their normal everyday routines.
Thankfully, this isn’t a terrifying jump-filled film of loudness and instant gratification. This is a quiet dream that gradually becomes more vivid long after having watched it. Certain sequences are easier to remember, while others will become clear after your brain makes an obscure association. Slow, contemplative, and classical, Over Your Dead Body can’t be done justice in a single review, as it’s going to take many more watches to fully appreciate.
Over Your Dead Body review, Luke Ryan Baldock, August 2015.
Over Your Dead Body screens as part of this weekends Frightfest programme.
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