Japanese films about socially isolated teenagers are hardly rare, though truly original takes on the subject are uncommon. In his debut feature, however, Asato Watanabe has hit on one: Instead of being a wacky coming-of-age comedy or a weighty drama, “A Dobugawa Dream” seems to unfold in a dreamscape, where the border between reality and fantasy, the dead and the living, becomes permeable.
Scripted by Watanabe and shot on a near-zero budget, the film veers between the strenuously antic and the turgidly bleak, but a vitality and sympathetic vision power it through to its cathartic conclusion. Watanabe has said the film is based on his own experiences, and the film does have the feeling of a personal testament, though I hope its director didn’t live out all of his protagonist’s turmoil.
Similar to the early work of Takeshi Kitano, the story is full of visual gags, edited to elide the action and cut to a shot of a perpetrator or victim frozen in a ridiculous pose, with a bumbling cop frequently cast in the latter role.