Also, importantly, it's so self-aware and subjective that there's no simple literal interpretation. Its narrative games are so intertwined that it has incompatible layers of reality and can only be regarded as some kind of fable.
It starts with a naked woman performing fellatio in the shower... and biting off the man's penis. Ah, it's a bad dream. Our schoolboy protagonist, Shouta, wakes up in bed, goes to the living room and complains to his Dirty Old Man father on finding there a girl asleep in her underwear. He's a virgin. This kind of thing is giving him weird dreams. Off he goes to school... and a girl called Yamada Hitomi is waiting for him. They along together in the rain. She's got a voice like a duck, but she's nice. She's a small, relatively plain girl who freely mentions her reputation for dropping her knickers for anyone.
She offers to drop them for Shouta, if he'd like. He doesn't say "no".
What about Dad, though? He's a director, currently writing a film called Romance of the Dead. In other words, the film we're watching. It's hard not to see him as a surrogate for Tomomatsu himself, especially when he starts discussing zombie cinema with the girl on his bed and citing other Tomomatsu films (
Stacy: Attack of the Schoolgirl Zombies,
Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead). The girl's a stripper, porn star and prostitute who'd like to be in his films. (There are also pornstars in the current cast, e.g. Ren Miyamura, some of whom were also in
Rape Zombie: Lust of the Dead.) This conversation is interesting. This film has surprisingly good dialogue and you can't even fast-forward through its sex scenes. You might easily miss a charming or explosive conversation. That porn star has about ten men on the go, for instance, whom she calls her servants or worshippers. Dad's complaining about his female producer who'll veto anything too sleazy.
There are also zombies. Shouta and Hitomi see one getting bundled into an ambulance. "That's the first time I've seen a zombie," says Shouta, who's embarrassed about using Hitomi's given name despite having had sex with her. She thinks he's cute. They go into Hitomi's house for more sex... and find her stepfather's decapitated corpse in the bathroom. What's he doing there? Answer: she killed and ate him this morning. She's a zombie. The virus can also be transmitted sexually, so it might have been anyone. Does Shouta run like hell? Nope. He shags her again. This seems inadvisable, even without the STD thing, but he's become genuinely attached to her. He then buys tools to cut up the stepfather and leave him out with the rubbish.
The love story that ensues is oddly sweet, even when Hitomi shags, kills and eats a taxi driver. Dad and his girlfriend have a wild conversation too. The film might be comparing zombies with unconventional sexual activity (promiscuity, rape, prostitution, workplace sexual exploitation, you name it). People lie, or else might be lying when they say they were lying. We don't know. There's a magnificently mad scientist. There's a moment when the characters see themselves being filmed (with Dad directing the film crew), then ultimately it all ends with the last survivor (?) watching this very film on DVD. Despite appearances, though, it's not a rerun of that early conversation in the rain and is instead picking up conversational threads from later.
This one's pretty different. It ties reality in irreconcilable knots, but it plays fair with its love story. Does Hitomi really still look human, or is that just Shouta's perception? Existentialist questions are raised, including a nod to Zhuangzi's butterfly question and Mamoru Oshii's
Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer. ("Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.")
This film surprised me. It's far more thoughtful and interesting than I'd expected, although also sleazy enough to be a tough recommendation beyond the dirty mac brigade.
