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Dolls
ドールズ
2002 114 min Japan 12+
★7.5
Drama, Romance
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Trailers
Description
Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.
US Gross:
$4,067
Starring
Miho Kanno
Actor
Hidetoshi Nishijima
Actor
Tatsuya Mihashi
Actor
Awards
Venice Film Festival 2002
— Golden Lion
Key opinion
Takeshi Kitano’s 'Dolls' is a visually masterful, highly stylized meditation on love as a tragic and inevitable force. While widely praised for its aesthetic beauty, score, and symbolic depth, the film's deliberate, contemplative pace and detachment elicit polarized reactions.
| Score | Joe Hisaishi’s score effectively heightens the film's pervasive melancholy and emotional resonance. | |
| Cinematography | The cinematography and Yoji Yamamoto’s costume design create a stunning, photograph-like aesthetic that elevates the film to a work of art. | |
| Theme | The Bunraku puppet framework serves as a profound metaphor for the characters' lack of agency and the tragic nature of their devotion. | |
| Pacing | The film's slow, meditative, and symbolic approach to storytelling is either deeply immersive for patient viewers or exhausting and inaccessible for others. | |
| Acting | Some viewers find the performances and the character dynamics to be artificial or emotionally distant, hindering a genuine connection to the narrative. |