Confessions
2010 • 106 minutes
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About this movie
Confessions is a 2010 Japanese film directed and written by Tetsuya Nakashima.
"Tetsuya Nakashima’s Confessions is one of Japan’s most important films of the year. Reigning the national box office for weeks, the film has seduced, frightened, provoked and moved audiences with the depth of its focus on the delinquency of a despairing youth. A stylized mixture of cruelty and compassion, Confessions deals with school violence, bullying, revenge and love, while also addressing the miserable state of Japanese public schools, prejudices against HIV victims and the consequences of allowing teenage violence to go unpunished.
A monologue is delivered over the usual chaos of a seventh grade classroom on a spring morning. The voice belongs to a teacher who stands powerless in front of her class, an undisciplined tangle of thirteen-year-olds playing with their mobile phones, shouting, moving around and simply not paying attention. But the teacher’s voice and her chilling address gradually become more and more disturbing. She announces that she is going to leave the school at the end of the month. A single mother overwhelmed by the death of her daughter, she cannot work any longer because she knows her child was killed by two of her own students.
The murderers are too young to be tried for their crimes and the teacher will not reveal their names, nor turn them in. Post-traumatic shock and detachment seem to have granted her an immense power and searing lucidity. Her revenge will be painfully pure.
Based on the bestselling novel Kohuhaku by Kanae Minato, Confessions reveals the key mystery in its opening sequence and then focuses on the reasons that prompted this violent act and subsequent vendetta. Shifting between the point of view of the teenagers and the devastated, grieving teacher, Nakashima prevents the audience from taking sides, allowing the viewers room to come to their own conclusions about the dark acts they witness."
Quoting Giovanna Fulvi from the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival site.
"Tetsuya Nakashima’s Confessions is one of Japan’s most important films of the year. Reigning the national box office for weeks, the film has seduced, frightened, provoked and moved audiences with the depth of its focus on the delinquency of a despairing youth. A stylized mixture of cruelty and compassion, Confessions deals with school violence, bullying, revenge and love, while also addressing the miserable state of Japanese public schools, prejudices against HIV victims and the consequences of allowing teenage violence to go unpunished.
A monologue is delivered over the usual chaos of a seventh grade classroom on a spring morning. The voice belongs to a teacher who stands powerless in front of her class, an undisciplined tangle of thirteen-year-olds playing with their mobile phones, shouting, moving around and simply not paying attention. But the teacher’s voice and her chilling address gradually become more and more disturbing. She announces that she is going to leave the school at the end of the month. A single mother overwhelmed by the death of her daughter, she cannot work any longer because she knows her child was killed by two of her own students.
The murderers are too young to be tried for their crimes and the teacher will not reveal their names, nor turn them in. Post-traumatic shock and detachment seem to have granted her an immense power and searing lucidity. Her revenge will be painfully pure.
Based on the bestselling novel Kohuhaku by Kanae Minato, Confessions reveals the key mystery in its opening sequence and then focuses on the reasons that prompted this violent act and subsequent vendetta. Shifting between the point of view of the teenagers and the devastated, grieving teacher, Nakashima prevents the audience from taking sides, allowing the viewers room to come to their own conclusions about the dark acts they witness."
Quoting Giovanna Fulvi from the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival site.