University of Laughs

Japan is in the middle of the war. The government has made it a condition that the text of every play to be staged is approved by a censor. The writer for a comedy troupe sits down across from the official to get his play approved. The official is a man nobody has ever seen laugh, and he thinks comedy is unnecessary in wartime. Every day he demands a new change; every night the writer rewrites the text and comes back. Almost all of the film takes place in a single room, between two men. The source is Koki Mitani's play; he wrote the screenplay too, and Mamoru Hoshi directed. Each thing the censor imposes makes the play funnier rather than ruining it, and as the man notices this he starts betraying his own job. Koji Yakusho plays the official and Goro Inagaki the writer. The story sets censorship up not only as an instrument of pressure but as two people beginning to make something together, and the ending is what makes that hurt.