Air Doll (2009)

Kore-eda’s preoccupations with death are on firm display here yet again, and over time Nozomi sees that even if there is a painful impermanence when it comes to living, we all leave something of us behind after we go.

Thanks to Kore-eda’s characteristic practice of thoughtful scripting and gentle direction, the metaphors, though too numerous, land gently and effectively.

Air Doll covers some of the same ground as that other postmodern Pinocchio story, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, while avoiding its facile sentimentality.

Overly long and occasionally clumsy, Air Doll can't be counted among Kore-eda's best. But much of it is lovely and expressive, and it's one of those films that can haunt viewers long after they've left the theater.

The film is a little too cute and scattershot to achieve real profundity, with the doll-woman too often coming across like a playfully erotic version of Being There’s Chance the Gardener, defined entirely by her absence of guile.

It’s remarkable how Bae’s commitment to the physical mechanics of a trickily metaphoric role in no way interferes with the heart she needs to show, and vice versa.

Japanese helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ongoing interest in love, loss and souls in limbo is stretched way too thin in Air Doll, a beautifully lensed (by Taiwanese ace Mark Lee) and charmingly played (by South Korean icon Bae Du-na) modern fairy tale about an inflatable doll who takes on a life of her own. Recut to a trim 90 minutes, this fragile yarn would work perfectly and have a chance of an afterlife as a specialty item. In its present form, pic may not get much farther than the fest netherworld.