Ms. 45 goes Robocop in a sublime avant exploit way. A new body to follow new images and textures. One of those rare films who seems to be constant reinventing its forms. It is cheap looking video keeps find unexpected and abrasive lighting schemes that are the most radical use of then new digital technology outside of Godard’s In Praise of Love. In its dirty and low rent way it is full of a demented charm that Takashi Miike wishes he could conjure. A true laboratory of forms, if a gross and cheap one. 15 years later, it remains one of the great found objects of the 00’s.

certainly an experience

The absolute garishness of early digital video pushed to its limit, its 60 minutes long and the opening credits take 5 minutes and about 90% of the film consists of slow motion. I honestly kind of love this.

For a 60 minute movie about the extremely unfortunate travails of a teenage prostitute at the hands of the worst teacher(s) in Korean Cinema and her corporate-backed biomechanically-aided vengeance thereupon , this is notable for extended longueurs and beautiful, expressionist digital cinematography with zero attachment to realism. The movie-makers sought and achieved a purposefully stagy, operatic theatricality. Never on the side of evil, always on the side of life. Even as a low-rent Robocop/La Femme Nikita hybrid, this remains a notable curiosity even among potential art-grind cybergoresploitation contemporaries. There simply isn't anything really quite comparable.

digital sewage landscapes, evil flesh rendered as ghosts. all you need is a girl and a gun.

É realmente preciosa essa alternância de tons do filme que gera desde momentos legitimamente bonitos e sublimes (o monólogo dela sobre o filho é incrível) a um puro circo histriônico de mil referências. O aparato está sempre a favor dessa opera pop exploitation de movimentos variados, usa de todo um amadorismo inventivo para ir reinventando seus modos. E o melhor é que o filme de fato se assume uma experiência visual acima de tudo, preserva um plot básico só para ir desfilando seu jogo de texturas, gestos épicos e todo um mundo violento de fantasia softcore neon que encanta a cada sequência.

This somehow manages to place itself right in the middle between being a hardcore violent film and a cozy experience. There are scenes with murder and then there are really calm slow scenes of characters dancing. One of my favorite shots was actually the opening credits that was a single shot of the main character staring at the camera. In the genre of "Schoolgirl becomes a killing machine," this is one of the most notable ones.

Asceticism by the means of violence and madness. Granulated cyberpunk aesthetics, fully adorned with artifice, that keeps moving the film further away from realism and closer to utter fantasy, such an ingenious imagination, fantastic settings and low budget design, a true gem. Constantly achieves poetic pungency amidst its generally aggressive behavior, everything being executed with so much patience and inspiration. Great soundtrack, by the way.

I also wrote an article for Multiplot! about this one (in portuguese), which is avaliable here.

she’s about to see the world. digital corruption soaking addictively back into its own depravity.

Like a low-budget live action industrial “Kite meets Robocop” that was found on its last surviving VHS tape. Garish and trashy. Of course I loved this thing