Manages the difficult feat of being simultaneously sordid and tedious at the same time and is ultimately surprisingly tame despite its unrated status.
Bounce Ko Gals(バウンス ko GALS)
Japan · 1997
1h 50m
Director Masato Harada
Starring Hitomi Satô, Yasue Sato, Yukiko Okamoto, Kōji Yakusho
Genre Drama
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Filmed somewhat in documentary style, it follows three girls over the span of one day and night in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Jonko runs a group of high school girls involved in paid dating, Raku is a street dancer, and Togo was brought up in the US and back in Japan for one year wants to escape to New York. Their contact with the world of talent scouts and yakusa places them in danger.
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What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Dave Kehr
Feels fabricated, studio-bound and claustrophobic, which doesn't add to the ripped-from-the-headlines authenticity this genre has always depended on.
The first half of the film is engaging enough to overshadow the missteps of the final act. It's a down and dirty look at the world of the ko gals, but it has class.
Rather than portraying these girls as one-dimensional victims, Harada offers a complex portrait of teenagers who've learned to make their exploitation work for them.
Village Voice by Michael Atkinson
Casting Tokyo as a neon wilderness thick with aged "perverts" and teenage pimps, the movie frames a critique of socially permissible pedophilia as indelible as Harada's eavesdropping mise-en-scène.
Bounce Ko Gals ultimately devolves into a litany of social ills, with not enough of a proper story, and Harada loses the thread of the film whenever he slips into slapstick comedy, or has his female leads play the role of giggly best friends.
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