Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nishimura
Starring: Eihi Shiina, Anna Nagasaki, Miyuki Torii, Yudai Uenishi
Even if you don't recognise (auteur of Holy Mother) Yoshihiro Nishimura's name, then you’ll be familiar with his
work. Mutant Girls Squad, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, etc: those headache inducing live action cartoons of candy colours,
sexualised young women and extreme gore which your mate who likes anime is
into. Tokyo Gore Police is the epitome of Nishimura's stuff,
a film where the bloody imagery is so arrestingly hyperbolic that I used
to knock it on as a silent background to parties at my flat. The cyberpunk
visuals of amputee kung-fu, robots that bleed and penile canons would
really set the tone for the evening!
Nishimura is certainly prolific, this is his third feature in five years,
along with a few TV directorial jobs, too (at least I think so, as imdb
doesn't list Holy Mother at the time of writing - they can’t
keep up with him!). A quick scan of premises and a dip into trailers
suggests that Nishimura has got a formula, and he's sticking to it. If it
ain't broke (off the body and spraying geysers of bright red fluid), eh?
This latest entry into the canon showcases the usual tropes - cute girls
and silly thugs, some of whom are half machine/squidgy animal, tearing
each other apart over a long hour and a half. The run here is that the
main character is a transexual angel who fights alongside the local Yakuza
against nasty property developers with occult powers. Trans actor
Anna Nagasaki plays the avenger, a hot superhero who strides
through the film like the protagonist of a video game, brutally
dispatching adversaries in a mechanical manner which soon becomes
repetitive, and certainly lacks the joyous ingenuity of
Tokyo Gore Police.
As a cisgender man I realise I'm not the best person to pass judgement
upon the film's delineation of transgenderism, and that any ensuing
commentary comes from a limited perspective. However, a trans
representation is central to Holy Mother, so here goes... The potential problem with Holy Mother is
that it is a film which is proudly predicated upon exploitation, with the
danger that Nagasaki's character could be glibly contextualised within the
general "bizarre" that is Nishimura's stock in trade, equating Nagasaki
with the other exotic novelties populating the screen. Obviously,
sensitivity and insight aren't ever going to be factors in this sort of
film, but nonetheless I found the representation of Maria to be
resoundingly positive. There is an early scene where she strips naked in a
public bath and the old geezers within comedically freak out at her
multi-faceted body, the only moment in the narrative where her gender is a
"plot point" and crucially the joke isn't on "her." Otherwise, characters,
even the baddies, just accept the situation.
The portrayal is certainly in better taste than the scene where a mutated
woman whose lower half is composed of a furry clam-like extended mouth
with sharp teeth slides up to a female victim and scissors her to bloody
death. The sequence is filmed in a salacious manner - from a preceding low
angle upskirt shot to the so-called victim's moans of supposed agony
sounding quite the opposite as she grinds her crotch rhythmically against
the shonky prosthetic. The vagina détente motif is consolidated when a
couple of blokes stab the fanny monster right between the lips, causing
abject blood to shoot right up in their faces. Gross, etc, yeah? The
implicit misogyny of this sequence, and its playing into the naïve
menstrual fears of the adolescent boys/manchilds who are
Holy Mother's rightful audience, reveals where the film's juvenile heart is really
at.
"Will this do?," you imagine Nishimura saying as he blocks another
arterial spray scene, has another bijin de-limb a gormless lug. For his
loyal audience, and within his cheap as chahan budget,
Holy Mother probably will suffice. Nonetheless, alongside
the crowd-pleasing practical monstrosities, there is also a preponderance
of digital effects which look dispiritingly like something a Commodore 64
crapped out. The plot (i.e. excuse for the action) runs its course about
half-way through and in its third act Holy Mother baldly
descends into "lol-random" territory; the film doesn’t so much end as just
give up when it finally manages to reach feature length. You'll probably
not make it that far.
Holy Mother played at Film Maudit
2.0 2023.
