Kokuhaku

Title: Kokuhaku (Confessions)
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima

Writer: Tetsuya Nakashima (screenplay), Kanae Minato (novel)

Cast: Takako Matsu (Yuko Moriguchi), Yukito Nishii (Shuya Watanabe), Kaoro Fujiwara (Naoki Shimomura) 

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Special Notes: A modern day dark play

            A story of psychological blackmail comes to surface while Tetsuya Nakashima turns Minato’s novel into a movie with well defined characters and powerful emotions. This dark thriller reveals the will of vengeance of a mother whose only girl is murdered and the drama she casts upon those who are responsible. Do not try to fool yourself; this movie is about madness dressed up as sanity.

            A succession of mind challenging events triggered by the previously mentioned death built up into a modern play, into a hard to watch but impossible not to watch movie.

            In the first confession the professor, Yuko Moriguchi, holds her last lecture, a lecture on life and the importance of it to her classroom. She does a beautiful performance because the monologue seems to be a struggle between her will and her conscience. After she gains confidence in her idea, she has no trouble whatsoever in exposing the truth behind her daughter’s death and so the monologue ascends into a motive and the motive is the ground on which the movie will grow from hereon. The first part of the movie is devoted to a childless mother’s drama and it is like a picture of still life, the action being withheld to a minimum. 

            After the truth is exposed, the action is released and the chaos reigns because the following confessions are based on fear of what could be and what won’t be. Those who were directly involved in the girl’s murder suffer most and even so their pain is not the same. The grieving mother strikes where it hurts harder and where the law does nothing, she does everything.

            The confessions remind me of Dante’s “La divina commedia”, the action comes second and the characters confess to the viewer, his role being more important than he could ever imagine.

            A great movie overall, “Confessions” brings us horror and sadism to understand the power of grief and revenge. I truly recommend this movie to all those who can keep an open mind when viewing a movie and can accept that those who have problems are still human.

“This is my revenge…

I have plunged you into the depths of hell…

This is the first step toward your redemption…

Just messing with you. “

We were expecting you…