Third Window Films Release Be My Baby on May 25th

At last year’s Terracotta Far East Film Festival I saw Be My Baby, a small independent film made by a workshop on a tiny budget and starring a bunch of unknown and rather inexperienced actors. The low-budget film was an acting tour-de-force and an example of smart directing making the most of minimal resources.

Be My Baby is a satirical story about a group of young, rough, and broke guys and girls who follow gyaru culture at a house party from hell and the fallout from that experience which leads to developing relationships, dirty secrets, terribly embarrassing revelations, and the exposure of how emotionally fragile, lonely and desperate these characters are. It’s twisting, talky, and at times tiring keeping track of the bed-hopping and shifting allegiances but there’s a lot of substance and the film is a real expose of one part of Japanese youth culture struggling with part time jobs and no expectations. This is a great example of ‘workshop’ filmmaking which is popular in Japan and, let me state again, the acting is phenomenal. I met some of the cast before the film and seeing the transformation in clothes, physicality, and speech was remarkable. Here’s my review of Be My Baby恋の渦 (2013) which goes into more detail about what I felt watching the film.

Third Window Films are going to release the film at the end of next month. Here are the details:

Be My Baby 恋の渦 (2013)

Be My Baby (2014) (UK Premiere)   

Japanese Title: 恋の渦

Romaji: Koi no Uzu

Release Date: March 30^th 2013 (Japan)

Running Time: 138 mins

Director: Hitoshi Ōne

Writer: Daisuke Miura (Original work/Screenplay),

Starring: Kenta Niikura, Naoko Wakai, Chihiro Shibata, Yuumi Goto, Kenta Enya, Hiroki Ueda, Daisuke Sawamura, Aya Kunitake, Sadaharu Matsushita,

Seen at Terracotta Far East Film Festival 2014.

Audiences used to the stereotypes of Japan where everything is kawaii and the people are all formality, blushing confessions, shyness and kindness, all the desu and degozaimasu heard in keigo (honorific language) will be in for a shock as Be My Baby exposes an unpleasant underbelly of J-pop culture with a bruising blue-black comedy about a group of fashion-conscious sex obsessed characters with more interest in carnal pleasures than their futures. Be My Baby is a razor-sharp satire of “gyaru” culture which sticks the camera into the steamy and chaotic love lives of a group of sleazy, emotionally damaged and desperate characters who betray each other with hilarious and scary ease.