ANNYONG YUMIKA (Japan, 2009)
Directed by: Matsue Tetsuaki
Starring: Hayashi Yumika, Yu Jin-Seon, Irie Koji

Don't get it twisted: Yumika Hayashi is way more than just a porn star.  She's a Rorschach test, film theory with curves, her pixelated onscreen image throwing off endless subjective refractions within the hearts of those who knew her, loved her, or just got off to her.  The "iron woman" of Japanese erotic film, who starred in critically acclaimed pink eiga LUNCHBOX and once had a telefilm screened at Cannes, Hayashi died in June 2005 at age 35, but in ANNYONG YUMIKA, the new documentary by jishu eiga maverick Tetsuaki Matsue (who also lensed concert doc LIVE TAPE, and is a NYAFF guest this year), Yumika's legend is reborn, her passion immortal.

A personal friend of Yumika's, Matsue centers his documentary around his auteurist autopsy of an obscure joint Korean-Japanese production she headlined, JUNKO: STORY OF A TOKYO HOUSEWIFE. In "Junko," Matsue sensed a connective thread to his own personal quest for identity as a Korean raised in Japan, detailed in his breakthrough documentary ANNYONG KIMCHEE.  While analyzing "Junko," Matsue also explores who Yumika really was to her colleagues, her lovers and her audience. 

Katsuyuki Hirano gave up his marriage for Yumika, filming their affair for posterity then turning it into a mainstream documentary; he's still heartbroken, scarcely able to speak of her passing.  AV porn giant Company Matsuo's confession of love is etched in celluloid with his softcore opus, the unforgettably titled HARDBALL PENIS, and his mournful laying of a cigarette by the railroad tracks where he and Yumika shot the video is a moment fraught with jolting emotion.  Even the grizzled old cameraman who's seen it all laments her passing: "There aren't any true stars in this field now...they're not bigger than life anymore." Was Yumika real or Memorex; alive and in love, or just on-camera? 

The shifting layers of reality in Matsue's doc present Yumika as a subjective enigma, much like the love object she plays onscreen, until we're unable to distinguish between the secrets in her real life and the truths laid bare from reel to reel.  Seeking to reconcile her life with his art and see which imitates which, Matsue persuades "Junko's" cast and crew to reenact an unfilmed scene, like a seance to raise the dead.  "No one can own her," one of 'Junko's' lovers explains. "We have to let her be free."  For Yumika Hayashi, this is both an epitaph and a mission statement.