This is such a great film. Imagine a Fassbinder story fed through a technicolor Japanese pop-cultural filter and then turned into a musical. Ostensibly it’s the story of a woman called Matsuko found murdered in a park, whose filthy apartment is cleaned out by her slacker nephew. This sets the scene for a number of episodic moments in both characters’ lives. Matsuko’s life had been branded “meaningless” by her family but it turns out the life contained Yakuza gangsters, murder, prison, mental illness, porn stars, high school teachers, petty larceny, teen boyband pop idols and a whole heap of cartoony loveliness. However, despite the director’s dazzling technical flashes of primary colours and sparkling, filter drenched scenery, this is a work of sadness and seriousness that ponders the pointlessness of life and our capacity to keep going despite this, and the possible existence of God as a clumsy, inelegant bag lady. It’s also very funny in places. This is well worth a couple of hours of your time – if you saw Nakashima’s last film “Kamikaze Girls” and loved it, as I did, you are gonna flip for this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memories_of_Matsuko