Why you can trust 12DOVE
Incurably bossy, ditzy and nine months pregnant, Mitsuko (Riisa Naka) rampages around ordering everyone’s lives for them whether they want it or not, like a low-charm oriental version of Amélie .
Writer/director Yûya Ishii’s comedy (his eighth feature in five years) is set in a skid-row Japan where no one knows where their next bowl of soup is coming from.
Long-lost loves, foundering diners and unexploded bombs figure along the way.
At first the effect is amusingly wacky, but before long the shouting and gurning quotient reaches discomfort levels and the movie winds up just irritating.