The intriguingly titled Funuke: Show Some Love, you Losers! (released 1 May by Third Window Films) begins with a stubbornly unruffled cat staring down an advancing truck on a deserted stretch of rural Japanese road. There is a screech of tyres and a dull thump, and as the overhead camera tracks forward to reveal two horrific bloody streaks on the road, we realise that we have not quite witnessed the death of Mr and Mrs Wago, caught in traumatic detail by their teenage daughter Kyomi. The shot of her father’s severed hand still clutching a smoking cigarette at her feet, followed by a cut to a funeral service sets the film up tonally as a typically acerbic Japanese dark comedy, which of course it is, though only partly.

Like so many Japanese films Funuke revolves around the awkward reunion of an utterly dysfunctional family. Kyomi was arguably already a troubled child even before witnessing the death of her parents, and had been suffering the guilt of shaming her family by secretly recording their travails in manga form and winning a newcomers award for it in a popular publication where it was published for all to see (the fact that everyone in the village reads this manga is absolutely hilarious). At the centre of her sordid creation is her neurotic sister, Sumiko (played by the doll like Eriko Sato), who has been trying to eek out a living in Tokyo as an actress for the past four years by any means possible.

When Sumiko returns, apparently to mourn her parents death but really to lay low from loan sharks, she once again begins to terrorise her younger sister, who in reaction begins drawing her manga once more. Later Kyomi justifies herself by screaming at her older sister: “why did you have to come back? You’re so strangely fascinating I couldn’t help myself.”

Stuck in the middle of the two is Sumiko’s frigid half brother Shinji (played by Masatoshi Nagase, who western audiences may recognise as the Japanese dude in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train and Fridrik Thor Fridriksson’s Cold Fever, as well as the star of Yoji Yamada’s excellent period drama Hidden Blade) and his sexless, odd ball wife Machiko (wonderfully played by Hiromi Nagasaku) who is desperate to become part of the family but is trying just a little too hard…

You’d think a film revolving around such a motley assortment of humanity, forced together in a confined space in the back of beyond would throw up a rich selection of comic opportunities – and you’d be right. But Funuke also manages to be a moving family drama, which allows you to feel sympathy for all of the characters, even the initially monstrous Sumiko, whose main method of communicating with the world is by barking orders out from behind her designer sunglasses. Indeed by the time the film’s satisfying twist occurs at the end you really don’t know who to invest your sympathy with.

This is director Daihachi Yoshida’s debut film and it marks him out as a talent to watch considering how he manages the difficult task of weaving together the threads of quirky humour and drama into a satisfying whole. There are elements of Katsuhito Ishii’s masterpiece A Taste of Tea in the film’s focus on a family coping with a bereavement in the countryside, though Funukeis much darker and it's off the wall tone and characterisation has somewhat more in common with comedies like Satoshi Miki’s Adrift in Tokyo and Turtles are Surprisingly Fast Swimmers. Unmissable for those looking for an intelligent, slightly eccentric comedy.

Words > Dean Bowman