LIVE TAPE (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Matsue Tetsuaki
Starring: Kenta Maeno
Concert films can be boring to an outsider, but sometimes, like in Jonathan Demme's Talking Heads flick, STOP MAKING SENSE, the filmmaker and the band match either other so well that you don't have to be a fan of the music to get the groove. From LIVE TAPE's opening lyric, "That summer at 18 I whacked off to Lost Paradise/In a staff dorm at a countryside retreat," to its final shot of an anonymous bike rider heading off into the late afternoon gloaming, LIVE TAPE is a tiny lo-fi miracle, a perfect matching of sensibilities between the director and musician Kenta Maeno, sometimes called the "Bob Dylan of Japan."

Director Matsue Tetsuaki had a tough 2008, full of loss and hardship, and so did  Maeno. Desperate to change their lives in 2009, they met up on New Year's day and for one, exhilirating, increasingly complicated 74-minute take, Tetsuaki followed Maeno through the streets of Tokyo as he belted out his music and occasionally ran into members of his band, the David Bowies, who accompany him. Passersby do their best to ignore him as he sings about sex and masturbation about how life is as boring as tofu and constantly checking his email. The journey culminates onstage in a full outdoor concert with his band ripping into "Weather Forecast."

It doesn't sound like much, but halfway through the movie, Tetsuaki begins to hassle Maeno from behind the camera, cajoling him into giving a better performance and making fun of him for hiding behind his sunglasses. They begin to talk and Maeno starts exposing his wounds: his struggle to be a musician, his mom's lukewarm support and his dad's sudden death from a heart attack. By the time he breaks out "Weather Forecast," the song he wrote for his dad, screaming out "Love changes into courage/Life goes on," to anyone who'll listen, LIVE TAPE has been galvanized and electrified. It's become more than just another movie about a guy playing the guitar, and has turned into a collaboration between two young artists who are desperate to make a mark on the world before life passes them by. Their stories of heartbreak and sorrow are shot into the sky like flares to light up the future, a homing beacon for all the bruised souls who keep fighting and never give up, a signal fire made of glorious noise.