Less is more is a coined phrase that in the case of this filmmaker, born in Kobe, becomes a splendid reality. An American genre film lover, at least of a few fetish filmmakers like Siegel, Peckimpah and the Hooper of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and creator of one of the most suggestive filmographies in contemporary Japanese film, Kiyoshi stopped being confused with the nonexistent relative of maestro Akira a long time ago now to claim his own space on the international scene and, without setting out to do so, move into the front line in the vanguard of this fantasy cinema that pays no attention to predetermined frontiers or conventionalisms.
Starting as a short film maker, winning awards even at the PIA Film Festival, and hardened as an assistant director to Kazuhiko Hasegawa and Shinji Somai, Kurosawa’s alternative as a professional director was given to him by Takahashi Banmei when he handed him the direction of Kandagawa Wars (1983). His virginal foray into the boggy but liberalizing spheres of pinku-eiga (not foreign to many of the main local sharpshooters), had its continuation with another film, The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl (1985) to later go on to immerse himself in the horror genre with titles like Sweet Home (1989) or the yakuza-eiga with the Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself (1996-97) and Revenge (1997) series, video and/or television productions where Kurosawa already began to show his skill and that in Cure (1997), the dark supernatural thriller that opened the doors for him to the West, he displayed completely with no intention of looking back.
From then on, Kurosawa became a genre in himself and his style became remained marked by a distended tempo, a generous composition in sequence shots and restless framings and an elliptic narration that showed noticeable philosophical concerns steered toward that existential pessimism he slapped us in the face with in the icy and quasi-apocalyptic Pulse (2001), possibly his masterpiece. After becoming a regular at international festivals with pieces like Charisma (1999), Séance (2000) or the aforementioned award-winning Pulse, and bringing us closer to horror in its purest state, without gratuitous theatricality and defining styles, Kurosawa has had time to divide critics with the underrated Bright Future (2002), the inoffensive Doppelganger (2002) and very personal projects like the short film Soul Dancing (2004), a frugal attempt to return to the roots of the electric shadow before redirecting his steps towards “horror his way” with three new projects: Loft, House of Bugs (both 2005) and the splendid Retribution (2006).
Sitges Film Festival
