Red Post on Escher Street

A director opens auditions for his new film. Hundreds apply. The film is not interested in who gets the lead but in the lives of the people who turn up: one has lost her mother, one is chasing an ex, one only wants to stand inside a crowd. Eventually shooting begins and the extras trample each other to get into frame. The subject is not cinema but the people outside the frame also having stories. In a long scene at the end the camera turns to the crowd at the back and everyone we have come to know is there; the narrative moves its own centre. The form is raw and crowded. Handheld camera, natural light, a great many characters and overlapping talk. Sion Sono disperses the narration deliberately and builds no single protagonist. The circumstances of the production match its subject. Sono made it with participants from an acting workshop he had set up, on a very small budget; most of the cast are not professionals and the characters attending auditions are played by people who really were auditioning. Who it is for: viewers who like Japanese independent cinema and films about filmmaking. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an orderly narrative; the film is scattered on purpose and the number of characters makes it hard to follow.