It might not work all the time and the chaos leaves much unclear, but there’s no denying there’s a compelling nature to all the messiness.

Gakuryu Ishii delivers a composition – a concatenation of static shots and floaty dynamic moments – that keeps the spectator engaged throughout the narrative with ease.

Ishii films this story with stylized energy, strange, shadowy atmospherics and a vibe comically deranged but deeply serious.

The eponymous film... assumes familiarity with the source novel and affords, accordingly, little reflexive distance from its weird wavelength. Its satirical subtext proves remarkably elastic, and consequently frustrating and inconsequential.