One Piece! 水玉 COLLECTION

This 1999 Japanese film by Shinobu Yaguchi and Takuji Suzuki consists of fourteen short episodes. All were shot under the same rules: no zoom, no pan, no editing and no sound added afterwards. Each episode is a single take following a single situation. A woman misreads an advertisement and arrives at a job interview in a rabbit suit; another hides to surprise her friends and no one comes. The humour comes from the constraint. Because the camera cannot move it waits until the scene ends; the embarrassment and the waiting stretch out and the viewer cannot escape. The episodes take aim at Japanese codes of conduct. Who it's for: those who like formal experiments under constraint and dry humour. Who it's not for: viewers expecting narrative; the film is made of independent short pieces.