An Adolescent

An interesting film, and while it is not entirely successful (and at times most puzzling), it achieves a certain poignancy.

Okuda creates that slightly surreal atmosphere of ghost-town emptiness that will be familiar to fans of Takeshi Miike, but he infuses it with a romantic's sense of deep yearning.

Decidedly uneven yet intriguing.

Suicide, child molestation, corruption, insanity and the faintest implication of incest are wound around the film's suggestion that the cure for modern-day alienation and anomie lies in embracing traditional Japanese culture, like ritual tattooing.

Okuda's debut behind the camera, Shoujyo, is a dirty old man's delight: schoolgirls galore in short skirts or, in Yoko's case, nothing at all. That may be enough for some viewers, but not for those who insist on a story that gives substance to its characters.

The film, at least 20 minutes too long, has too many competing story lines to succeed as more than an oddball mood piece.

The problem is that both as a director and as an actor, Okuda never makes a particularly convincing case either for sex or for deeper commitment as a road away from the abyss.