VIBRATOR (Japan, 2003)
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Shinobu Terajima, Nao Omori

“…it throbs with an infectious energy, erupts with a raw emotional force. It is an ode to the open road, leaps of faith, the transforming power of love.”

— Mark Schilling, Japan Times

International Filmfest Mannheim-Heidelberg - 2003

Special Mention – Ryuichi Hiroki

Nantes Three Continents Festival - 2003

Winner – Best Actress – Shinobu Terajima

Tokyo International Film Festival - 2003

Winner – Best Actress – Shinobu Terajima

Yokohama Film Festival - 2003

Winner – Best Actress – Shinobu Terajima

Every now and then a movie is so far ahead of the pack that you just can't see the pack anymore. VIBRATOR is winning awards left and right and has appeared on virtually every single Japanese "best of" list for 2003. If a movie that aches with this much heart can be universally loved it gives you hope for the whole stinking human race.

Rei is a bulimic, alcoholic freelance writer who heads to the convenience store late one night to pick up some magazines, some instant noodles and some booze. A trucker passes through and she has one of those instant stranger crushes we all sometimes get when we're out in public, and she follows him to his truck hoping for a little NSA nookie. He's a decent guy, and when he extends a post-coital invitation to her to join him on the job for a few days she surprises herself and says yes. The movie plays out on the road, on loading docks, and in cheap hotels as the two of them slowly lower their guards, drop their acts and, in a state of mutual psychological exhaustion, the basket case chick, and the self-aggrandizing trucker become human. That’s all the movie's about, two people who make a real connection. But VIBRATOR is a movie MacGyver, building transcendence out of the most unlikely materials: convenience stores, awkward conversations, Mack trucks, CB radios and a cell phone set to "vibrate".

Despite its energetic arsenal of voice-overs, title screens, fantasy sequences and x-ray shots this flick is completely driven by the actors — if they weren't perfect and if the director didn't have the good sense to stay out of their way, this movie would be a damp squib. But they are perfect, and so we get pyrotechnics instead. Shinobu Terajima is a stage actress and her Rei is instantly recognizable as every woman who’s full of self-doubt, self-loathing, and who’s desperate to be free of her demons, but scared to let go of the only lifestyle they know. Nao Omori (Ichi the Killer of Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer) plays the trucker, Okabe, and he’s the contradictory guy we’ve all met: kind and self-important, a good listener but an egotistical talker, confrontational and in hiding from his own failed life — you don’t know whether you want to kiss him or kill him.

VIBRATOR is a loopy, liberating ride, sporting a case of aesthetic and emotional bedhead. In the end, the movie makes no promises, comes to no grand realizations and doesn't do anything except be honest. But with most movies trumpeting bland aphorisms in place of stories and ideas (Be True To Yourself, Love Conquers All, You Can’t Buy Happiness) a movie that performs the simple, quiet act of being honest burns through a world of motion picture crap like a nuclear explosion. This one is a small miracle for weary, movie-going souls.