R100

R100 (2013) — watch online on iFILM, a Japanese absurdist comedy directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto. Nao Omori plays Takafumi, a mild-mannered furniture salesman raising a teenage son while his wife has been in a coma for years.

He signs a one-year contract with a secret club called Bondage. The terms are simple: he submits; there is no exit. Professional dominatrixes begin showing up in the middle of his ordinary days — in restaurants, at work, anywhere. It starts as black comedy. It ends somewhere genre labels can't follow. Matsumoto, best known in Japan as a stand-up comedian, built a film that mocks its own rules as fast as it introduces them. Nao Omori carries the whole thing with a face that never quite settles into any one expression. Stream R100 (2013) online on iFILM.