Confessions

Shortlisted for the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Japan's entry is a well-crafted tale of horror-tinged revenge. More cerebral and slower-paced, and less violent, than similar Japanese films in the revenge genre, Confessions presents a dazzling package of movie bravado.

The acting, screenplay, editing, music and cinematography frequently alienate, surprise and shock their audience. Do all the devices make it a better film than the actual Oscar-winner (a sentimentalised racial allegory from Denmark)? Yes. Could it have won? Never. Would Oscar voters applaud megalomaniac children who are cold-blooded murderers with vicious or neglectful mothers?

A widowed junior school teacher's infant daughter is killed on purpose twice by two of her pupils, on whom she will wreak horrible vengeance. She won't kill them, but eventually ensure that they kill their mothers. The stories ("confessions") of almost everyone involved are told, via flashbacks and off-screen commentaries, starting with the teacher's 30-minute detailed account of her child's death.

After their milk break, and initially unruly, the school class is told how two boys, A and B, waylaid the child and drowned her. Slowly, through finely-timed cuts, the children are seen to pay closer attention, finally panicking when told by the teacher that she's laced the two boys' drinks with HIV-infected blood (from her dead husband). A noir tale that's barely credible, it's told with gripping calmness by the lead actress, Takako Matsu.

The two boys note their formative influences and innermost wishes, while the class's quiet self-willed leading girl recounts the new young male teacher's efforts to reach out to one of the boys, who's turned into an unwashed mentally-disturbed reclusive. That boy's wimpering, doting mother blames the woman teacher for his state, but his partner in crime is sure that the teacher's HIV claim was only a scare tactic. He befriends the schoolgirl, killing time with her while he plans how to be re-united with the mother who'd abandoned him.

Loose ends in the story dangle threateningly around much of the time, most noticeably in the foolish replacement teacher's lack of knowledge of the school's involvement in a child's death. Coincidences are hard to accept, but only on reflection. During the film, visually dazzled by darkening cloud formations interspersed between artfully-composed sound, light and blood effects and aerial or hand-held shots of malicious children, an audience can only sit transfixed, waiting for explanations.

With an ending that's close to grand guignol, and a final line of dialogue that's a dramatic slap in the audience's face, the movie leaves one shattered emotionally. Disbelieving, but aware that that the original, horrific sinfulness of children has been conveyed so well, a la Lord of the Flies.

This seventh feature film from writer-director by Tetsuya Nakashima, based on a novel, prompts searches for his previous award-winners: Memories of Matsuko, Paco and the Magical Book and Kamikaze Girls. It's pleasing that the Japanese film industry sent Hollywood a film it must have known could never win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Sentimentality.