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So much average

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Director, Uchida claims that this was originally intended to be a comic film but that now only the first half has humour. Well, I didn't notice it. We begin with the heroine as a child and being ignored by her family and are suddenly thrown with an incident at her school involving a very violent movement with a floor mop. I think I actually gasped. As an adult she develops an unusual lifestyle, not very amusing and more tan a little scary, selfie with a dead and deterorating old man anyone? I have to admit that the lady herself finds all this very amusing and speeds about with her bicycle and binoculars with a manic grin on her face. In the second half things become even more crazy, disconcerting and violent as the true horror of this film become evident. Not an easy view, this is very well made with great performances in very unusual and difficult situations but I won't be rushing to re-visit it for a little while.

Despite her best and increasingly desperate efforts to attract attention, little Nami is starved of affection, or indeed acknowledgement, from her parents. As she grows into an attractive teen (Kumi Takiuchi), she inherits great wealth, listens to appalling rock music and becomes increasingly possessive of her lonesomeness. She calls herself a Solitarian, She spends her time seeking out other Solitarians, the most extreme case being an elderly man who lived an isolated life before dying whilst watching pornography. Before reporting the incident anonymously, she takes a smiling selfie with his calcified corpse on the floor of his rubbish-strewn living room.Mr Shiomi (Takashi Sasano) is her next solitary obsession. Glorifying in observing his isolated life, Nami is then appalled that this heart-broken, faded man finds love and acceptance from his family and vows to punish him for taking away her 'property'.As events drift away from one level of bizarreness to another, and then another and another, not only does it lose track of its initial premise, but becomes little more than a series of darkly comic moments of violence and incident. The whole thing appears designed purely so the audience can scratch their collective heads and wonder what they are watching – which is exactly what happens, at least in my case. As a lesson in not ignoring your children, it's obscured by how … obscure it is. As a drama, or a comedy, or a horror, it's too fragmented to succeed. On its own terms, however, it is a film you won't forget in a hurry. There is an attempt in the last scene to marry up events with the perils of ignoring your children, which is pretty pointless considering that things have by this time run away with themselves to such an extent they cannot possibly be reasoned with – which seems to be the point, if there is one.

A girl from a highly dysfunctional family grows up a loner with a tendency towards violent episodes. As a young woman she develops the hobby of spying on fellow loners and the lonely. One day she sees her favourite subject, an old man, with a Christian volunteer. The realisation that he may be leaving his solitude sets off a dangerous anger within her and she decides to take his fate into her own hands with deadly intentions.This Japanese movie is one that seems to have gone somewhat under the radar. It's certainly a left-of-centre effort for sure that doesn't firmly place itself within one specific genre. It sets out for its first hour as an oddball comedy but in its final third it turns darker with the focus switching to the horror genre. It benefits from a couple of spirited performances from Kumi Takiuchi as Nami the disturbed young woman and Takashi Sasano as Shiomi the old man. The material never fully comes together in an entirely cohesive manner, however, with the whole idea of a girl spying on solitary people a concept that isn't developed as much as it might have been. The result is a pretty loose movie that doesn't entirely gel. It's still well worth a watch though if you enjoy Japanese movies from the quirkier side of the spectrum and it benefits also from being offbeat enough to be kind of unpredictable.

Neglected as a child, an independently wealthy young woman spends her time spying on individuals who she considers to be as lonely and isolated as her in this decidedly offbeat film from Japan. The movie initially plays out like a quirky comedy with lead actress Kumi Takiuchi grinning from ear to ear all the time while riding her bicycle, camping on rooftops and taking notes on the lonely citizens she enjoys watching, whom she terms "Solitarians". The plot thickens though when one such "Solitarian" turns out to be less cut off from the world than she thought. First, he lets himself be smitten by Christian missionaries, then his extended family keep popping by, and things turn very horror-like as Takiuchi takes drastic measures to ensure that the man remains the "Solitarian" that she initially identified him as being. The structure of the film is hardly perfect. The young actress who plays Takiuchi as a child is equally effective, if not more so, and the film could have benefited from spending more time on her traumatised childhood, while the horror angle comes extremely late in the piece - something that results in the second half of the film feeling far superior to the first half. Never to mind, Takiuchi never falters throughout and the film is full of neat touches, such as the constant use of upbeat music to highlight her delirious view of the world, smiling as non-Solitarians are hit and assaulted. Takashi Sasano (playing the man she becomes obsessed with) holds his end up very well too, almost becoming just as irrational as her as all the madness spirals towards a close.