Credits: screenplay: Hitoshi Matsumoto; director of photography: Yasuyuki Tôyama; editor: Yoshitaka Honda; music: Yasuaki Shimizu; sound: Kunio Ando; production design: Etsuko Aikô, Atsuo Hirai; producer: Isao Yoshino, Akihiko Okamoto; production: Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd;

Country: Japan

Year: 2009

Running time: 93

Colour: Colour

Format: 35 mm

The well-known comedian-turned-director takes the “Butterfly Effect” (the flapping of a wing affects some larger situation far away, you know, Chaos Theory) to a mind-boggling surreal degree. For a while you watch two films: a nicely shot conventional Mexican tale about a washed-up provincial wrestler and his family; and a series of abstractions of Matsumoto himself trapped in, and trying to find a way out of, a sterile white space with rubber cherubs’ penises dotting the walls. There is a connection between the two narratives, far-fetched for sure, with an outrageously dynamic payoff. Howard Feinstein