BOYS ON THE RUN (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Daisuke Miura
Starring: Kazunobu Mineta, Mei Kurokawa, You, Ryuhei Matsuda, Ryo Iwamatsu

BOYS ON THE RUN is a bit like catching someone masturbating: unbearably humiliating, unimaginably awkward but also kind of funny. Tanishi (Kanzunobu Mineta in a performance that will ensure he never dates again) is a 29-year-old virgin whose job is the hopelessly horrible one of refilling bubble vending machines with novelty items. His coworkers are arrogant bores and gloomy alcoholics. His hobby is porn. The one bright spot in his life is Chiharu (Mei Kurokawa) his cute co-worker who treats him like a human being and not like the butt of every joke. Could it possibly be that she...gulp...likes him? Even after he accidentally loans her a bestiality porn DVD? All signs point to “yes.”

With a little care and attention, Tanishi blossoms into a pretty great boyfriend and he and Mei’s romance has all the awkward start-stop of a real life workplace affair hesitantly blossoming. But those constant close-ups of his stirring crotch are a sign that Tanishi is also a man and men are dogs and Tanishi turns out to be a slave to his baser urges and he winds up screwing everything up. To make it even worse, Mei takes up with his co-worker, the hopelessly handsome, infinitely arrogant Ryuhei Matsuda (one of Japanese cinema’s sneering, pretty young boys) sending Tanishi spiraling into despair. But like Rocky (or is it Travis Bickle?) he’s determined to get his revenge.

BOYS is based on a manga by Kengo Hanazawa and it revels – indeed wallows – in all the dirty little details that most romantic comedies leave out: the inopportune boners, the embarrassing bad skin, the awkward silences, the creepy passes from roommates. But as gross as it gets, it’s redeemed by the fact that this is all just life, and probably life that we’re all familiar with, we’re just not used to seeing it in the movies. After all, movie magic glosses over all the dirty stuff and ooky stuff that makes life so strange. But BOYS revels in it, and there’s something about its matter-of-fact approach in which NOTHING is off limits that becomes almost sweet. This is a movie that puts both the “sex” and the “come” back into “sex comedy.”

Presented in association with Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film (July 1 - 16, 2010)