I had never heard of Kiyoshi Kurosawa before the Mubi retrospective but I'm a huge fan of his style: the spare soundtracking, heightened and sensual sound design, and absolutely perplexing and entrancing characterization. This is a martial arts (short) film, but it doesn't become that until the last 10 minutes of its half hour runtime. In the run up, it teases a virus mystery, an industrial intrigue caper, a ghost story, and a rom com, all before revealing the martial arts theme before a classic fight chain up the floors of the company building against lackeys to build up to a final boss fight (which is subverted as well). The fight scenes are extremely good, lacking the over-the-top choreography of many martial arts flicks. Well worth the watch.
Review of Beautiful New Bay Area Project
