ANOTHER GIRL HELD HOSTAGE IN THE BACK ROOM LOVE STORY FROM JAPAN: HIDEO JOJO’S DISAPPEAR
DISAPPEAR (Shissô: boku ga kanojo o tojikometa wake)
2005/Director: Hideo Jojo/ Writer: Hideo Jojo
Caste: Mei Fujishiro, Kaede, Kazuaki Kubo, Yûya Matsuura, Eiji Nakamura, Masayoshi Nogami, Norihisa Yokokawa
There is not too much about this film on the net really. In fact one site I finally located looking for behind the scenes info simply listed the cast as “Asian actors”. I went through a lot of this stuff out of Japan a few years ago and there is usually not much to distinguish one film from another. I suppose you could classify it as a Japanese “pink” movie, meaning soft core porn and mixed in with some unsettling (to some anyway) violence, though the term “pink film” usually refers to films made during the 70’s and 80’s. I think the current term has become “pinku” but I am open to correction here. This film follows a theme in movies I have personally come to call the “Miranda” formula. Miranda was the name of the female captive in the book and film by John Fowles called The Collector (aka The Butterfly Colletor , directed by William Wyler - who turned down The Sound of Music to direct this film- with Terrance Stamp and Samantha Eggar). Essentially the formula is usually about an obsessed loner or social misfit who kidnaps a young woman for one reason or another. Could be spontaniously or after a long period of rumination and stalking. At first she resists him and hates him, but eventually a sort of Stockholm Syndrome sets in and after he has fed her and washed her and supplied her with toilet paper the victim learns to “love” her captor or to at least connect with him in some way. The theme has been done a few times before in Western films (Sweet Hostage, The Keeper) and is not something unique to Japanese cinema. What might be unique to Japan though is that you get the sense Japanese guys are using this stuff as dating guides.
In this sweet little “how to make a girl love you” manual Asi is kidnapped by Yinan who has long been obsessed with her. She, Yinan and Kwangshu are childhood friends though now Asi is “romantically” involved with Kwnagshu. I add the sarcastic quotation marks because in these films the girl never seems to really enjoy the guy’s company or advances and the men are always whiny, sniveling wusses who go into psychotic tantrums if she the girl does not send a text message back soon enough. Yinan, when not working at the metal shop with a crippled, caged duck and obligatory step-father/daughter sex action in the office, is home alone grinding his sashimi to Japanese porno pics with cut outs of Asi’s face pasted to the model’s photos. This seems normal enough, but later after Asi has fallen asleep he is caught trying to steal a kiss. She awakens with a start and Yinan does what any Japanese guy would do in this situation with the girl he secretly loves, he proceeds to try and rape her. In the course of the struggle Asi knocks over his porno collection and sees the pics of herself on the bodies of the naked models. For some inexplicable reason she freaks out and resists more and is knocked out as she falls on the table, and the rest of the movie is dedicated to Yinan’s courtship of her as she is chained to the wall in his bedroom.
The movie ends with Yinan killing himself, the molested stepdaughter (who is about 22 or 23) deciding she does not want to be raped by her evil stepfather any more and sets off to make her own life, and the crippled duck being set free. Asi and Kwangshu ride off together on his bicycle and over all it is a happy ending for this type of film. I mean with only one suicide, the duck not being eaten, the molestation victim walking away (finally) and the boy and girl getting back together for more joyless sex.
Lots of gratuitous cotton white panty shots and nudity make up for the odd behavior of everyone involved.
The Chinese characters on the DVD cover (technically they are Japanese of course, but Japanese written language is primarily based on Chinese Han Zi characters and while my skill is baby level I am trying to learn) say: Shi Zong Shao Nv, which I translate loosely as “vanished girl” or “girl who disappeared”. I cannot add Chinese characters to my Wordpress blog so I must use pinyin only. I am waiting for an updated language plug-in.
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September 5th, 2008 at 4:08 am
I feel like you can get a real sense of the story just from the screenshots and DVD cover art.
Heh.
September 5th, 2008 at 4:27 am
yea. maybe I do not even have to finish the review here
But I am really trying to review almost everything I watch now. I have an “angle” here that will give this J-ploitation film some added credibility. Check back later.
Bill
September 6th, 2008 at 3:48 am
You mention the Miranda formula movies which originated with The Collector; but I can’t think of any more Miranda movies. I know you’re right, but I guess I’m just not enough of a movie buff to come up with any. Maybe an interesting post in the future would be on Miranda Movies.
Hmmm…. I’m still trying to think of one….dammit!
September 6th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Hmm that is a good question and to be honest I cannot think of a title of one either though I have seen a few and so will do some research or just wake up a little ( I just out of bed and I am judo flipped with a great question). Of course The Collector (which I am trying to get now) is a movie like The Servant that is not just a captive/captor film but is an analogy of sorts for British Class struggle and sexual mores of the sixties, and so it is in its own special category and I hope to write about it soon. I love the British “class struggle” or “blackboard (teacher/student)” films of the 60’s.
I can only think of three off the top of my head.One is called The Keeper with Dennis Hopper and Asia Argento. I forget the details, but tough gal Asia Argento was not to be a kept butterfly without resistance. He was a cop and I forget how she winds up in his basement in a huge cage. I would include even the newer Black Snake Moan with Samual Jackson and Christina Ricci though the girl is not confined in a cage and the captor does not love her buts wants to save her soul. But it still fits the general theme of captor/captive relationship. There was a made for TV type movie (i.e. Tuesday Movie of the Week) called Sweet Hostage with Martin Sheen and Linda Blair where Sheen, in a young a lean performance, holds Blair, in a young and plump performance, captive and little by little she falls in love with him. I would like to see this movie again as Sheen does such a good job, as he usually does. Well, there are three, am I redeemed a little?
Maybe when I say the theme is done over and over it makes it sound like I mean a million times and so that may be a poor choice of words I will correct, but I think there have been a few others too of the exploitation type. In the Japanese pinku type films however the stalker captive/captor theme is more frequent and I am not a sociologist but I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) that there is something in the culture itself that makes this a more marketable theme than here ( I should say there, where you are, in the States, as I am in Asia, but you now what I mean I think
). Here it would be hard for me to name films because of the obscurity of some these and getting info on them (getting info on this movie was hard) and the fact some movies I have seen are not even subtitled. Some are little more than violent porn flicks to be frank and not really deserving of a review here where we try to keep our standards, er… higher 
.
Anyway, it was a good question and I wish I had had a cup of coffee before tackling it. If I can come up with half a dozen I will do a special post on the topic. I want to start doing specialized posts, on themes, directors, actors, soundtracks, etc… I think I will reword my statement too as it does seem to infer there is a whole sub-genre of this stuff out there, which there really is not as far as I know.
September 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
There are definitely a lot of “keep some girl tied up in your cellar/attic/whatever” films/TV movies around. A lot of them end poorly for the captor and the victims don’t necessarily come to love them, so I don’t know if they’d fit your category. A lot of them also cross over into serial killer films…
September 10th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Wlliam Wyler’s The Collector seems to be the only one I have seen so far (Western style anyway) where the captor gets away with it and at the end is stalking his next victim with more experience. Usually the girl gets her revenge.
I have about 7 movies, all Western, to do a post on this weekend I think. On an Asian BT site I found some Japanese series, six films so far I think, where this is the theme. I cannot connect with the download page yet to get one but will continue my noble efforts. I should do a post on getting movies and being connected in China. Anyway, the movies are called called something like “Perfect Education” ( I forget exactly) and the 1st one says on the DVD review that an older teacher captures a student and locks her up and she gradually learns to submit to him and love him. Sigh, love seems so simple in Japan.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
http://www.irfree.com/2008/09/30/disappear-2007-dvdrip-xvid-ssf/
October 1st, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Thanks. I will go check this site out. I have a bunch of freaky Japanese movies queued up so check back and I hope I do them justice… or give them justice as the case warrants