Anssi Vartiainen Inju - The Geisha Killer, alternatively known as Inju: The Beast in the Shadow, is based on a Japanese novel by Edogawa Rampo. It tells about a French crime author who admires and has based much of his work on the expertise and skill of a Japanese colleague, named Shundei Oe, a known recluse who has never been seen in public. But now our main character is about to travel to Japan and it just might be that he gets a chance to meet his idol.What makes this film work is its cohesion. No single element in it stands out, nothing in it is all that extraordinary. But neither does it have any weak elements in it. It is a proficient mystery thriller done right. The two main actors, Benoît Magimel and Lika Minamoto, are both talented and likable in their roles. The Japanese setting is utilized well enough. The score is nice, the pacing is nice and the twists are genuinely thrilling, though I did see the final twists coming a bit early, but that simply gave me the joy of discovery.Then again, I can sort of see why this film hasn't received all that much praise. It doesn't stand out. It is merely good in an average way, which makes it forgettable. I'm personally a big fan of Japanese culture, which certainly made me more favourable to this film, allowing me to accept it from the start. But, otherwise, I probably would have thought it to be a bit lazy and not that inspired.It's still a good film. Definitely worth seeing if you're into thrillers and especially if you like Japan as a setting as well. Don't expect any miracles, just lay back and enjoy a decent mystery story with an erotic undertone.

jennyhor2004 Enjoyably silly movie about a literature academic and aspiring crime fiction writer whose career, night-time as well as day-time, seems to revolve mostly around a mysterious and reclusive Japanese pulp crime fiction author who may be mentally disturbed and perhaps even psychotic, "Inju ..." poses food for thought about the way films can be constructed and how Westerners view foreign societies and their institutions. Alex Fayard (Benoît Magimel) has just had his first novel published and translated into several languages and it becomes a best-seller around the world, especially in Japan. His Japanese publisher organises a promotional trip so after wrapping up his last lecture for the term with a screening of a film based on a gruesome novel by Shundei Oe, that famous hermit writer, Fayard jets off to Japan for TV and radio interviews and book-signing sessions. While in Japan, among his marketing duties and sight-seeing trips organised by the publisher and his guide Ken Honda, Fayard meets and falls in love with a geisha, Tamao (Lika Minamoto), who seeks his help as she is being pursued by a vengeful and violent ex-boyfriend Ichiro Hirata who may well be the strange and disturbed Shundei Oe.The film starts impressively with a visually striking and melodramatic mise-en scène of the closing scenes of the crime drama Fayard screens for his students and for a while you may wonder whether "Inju ..." will delve into issues like authors' responsibility to readers to show the triumph of good over evil in fictional worlds where society flounders in moral ambiguity, evil is often disguised as good, good people are cut down and evil ones profit, and the universe itself appears not to care either way. At least Fayard hopes to meet his idol and argue that point; the movie appears to travel that way, setting up Fayard as a crusader using Oe's plot constructions and arguments against themselves in his novel, and Oe as a sinister force who may test Fayard's stand and moral mettle with the same weapons, and perhaps leave the Frenchman a changed man of stronger steel. Tamao may be the innocent mystery woman compromised by a past romance and her current relationship with her rich but violent and abusive patron Ryuji Mogi (Ryo Ishibashi). Clues and warnings are left for Fayard to discover and he gets swept up in piecing together a puzzle of Tamao's dangerous liaisons and the mystery of Shundei Oe's identity, nature and what he intends for Tamao, Mogi and Fayard himself.Well the plot doesn't go as expected in a conventional, suspenseful, noirish way and astute viewers will pick up enough clues to crack Oe's identity before all is revealed in the twist ending. Some people might feel a bit cheated by the MacGuffin device that drives what turns out to be a soap opera plot. Admittedly the set-up is ingenious and clever if far-fetched and Fayard turns out to be no more than a puppet manipulated by Oe in a not very complex web. "Inju ..." is more clever and intellectual mystery crime drama of the kind Agatha Christie and her ilk might have written if they were alive today and were aware of psychological horror / slasher and fiction / film noir genres and their elements. Everything that happens to Fayard from the moment he leaves his apartment is a test of his character and intelligence in some way in a tight construction by Oe, and whether he wins or not depends on whether he can recognise the sequence of events happening around him as Oe's next novel with himself as protagonist.The acting isn't anything special and lead actor Magimel looks mostly shell-shocked throughout the film. There are very lovely scenes of modern Japanese life that are reminiscent of the style of Seijun Suzuki's 1960's gangster flick "Kanto Wanderer" and "Inju ..." could be viewed as a travelogue of the exotic in modern Japanese culture with sometimes voyeuristic emphasis on its underbelly (the rich yakuza lifestyle, the use of ropes and knots in sadomasochistic sex) and the mix of native traditions and institutions with Western-style cultural sophistication."Inju ..." could have been a real cat-and-mouse game in which Oe and Fayard try to outwit each other, trying to understand one another's motives and Fayard himself questioning his own morality and original motivation in championing and criticising Oe's body of fiction where evil always trounces good. Instead it's pretty much a standard crime thriller with considerable potential left unrealised that Hollywood could do better if the right hack director (say, Ridley Scott or David Fincerh) were thrown into the hot seat. The opening scenes make "Inju ..." worth at least one viewing.At the very least, the movie can be viewed on one level as an intellectual subversion of Western presumptions about Japanese society, its treatment of women and the institution and of geishas and the roles they play vis-à-vis their male clients, and how one woman uses her supposed victim status and passivity to play two men and their weaknesses against each other.

Max_cinefilo89 Aside from Reversal of Fortune and Single White Female, Barbet Schroeder is probably best known for the two documentaries he made about two controversial figures like Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and French lawyer Jacques Vergès, aka Terror's Advocate. His latest fiction work, Inju, continues in that direction by dealing with another mysterious, possibly evil man.The man in question is Shundei Oe, a reclusive Japanese writer who has never let anyone see his face, and unlike, say, Terrence Malick, he doesn't even allow his picture to circulate: the only clue readers have as to what he looks like is a disturbing self-portrait (think David Carradine in Kill Bill with a skin disease) he puts on the back cover of his novels, morbid thrillers where evil always prevails. Oe is the subject of the studies of Alex Fayard (Benoit Magimel), a French college lecturer who believes the atrocities in those books reflect the author's own deranged fantasies. When Fayard goes to Kyoto to promote a book of his own, an Oe-style tale minus the sombre ending, he starts having unsettling dreams and receives a menacing phone call during an interview. On top of that, he meets a geisha named Tamao (Minamoto Lika), who claims to be stalked by her former lover: Shundei Oe.That's the premise: the rest of the film is a succession of murders, mysteries and twists, all delivered following the blueprint set by The Usual Suspects and exploited to the point of self-parody by the Saw franchise. These parallels aren't just predictable, they're downright unavoidable, since Schroeder's blatant intent is to make Shundei Oe a cinematic icon in the same league as Keyser Soze and Jigsaw (the latter is more of a genre icon, but that's beside the point). That this doesn't happen is due to the director mimicking the behavior of the film's protagonist: just like Alex imitates Oe without adding anything personal, Schroeder sets out to be a new Bryan Singer while being handed a ridiculously thin script and a twist ending that some people (most, actually) will find more obvious than the final revelation of The Village.And yet, despite that, Inju isn't god-awful or even boring. How come? Because Schroeder most likely knew the plot wasn't that strong and put all his energy into the creation of a memorable, perverse atmosphere, and he succeeds: the gloomy mood is adequately complemented by sly visual nods to Cronenberg and Takashi Miike, most notably the weird sexuality that is present in either's body of work. There is nothing too explicit, but what is there is suggestive enough to wonder: what if Schroeder had directed Basic Instinct 2? As for the acting, there is nothing special to write home about, but Magimel deserves some back-slapping for being a better actor here than he was in the abysmal Crimson Rivers 2 (still nowhere near the heights he reached in The Piano Teacher, though).And then there's the movie's major selling point, one of the best opening sequences in the genre's history: a Tarantino-inspired film-within-the-film that sums up Inju's unconventional charm in ten minutes. The overall picture isn't a masterpiece, that's for sure, but that beginning is worth the ticket price regardless.

Harry T. Yung (brief report from the Toronto International Film festival) Despite the teaser on Internet, "Inju" turns out to be a somewhat mainstream mystery thriller except for maybe a little bit of kinky stuff that ranges from pretty standard to outrageously hilarious. If you have seen enough mystery thrillers, you'll probably guess the final twist before the end, although how soon you get it depends on how much of a veteran of this genre you are.The plot has some elements of interest. Top Japanese thriller writer Shundei Oe who leans heavily on the dark side has steadfastly refused to review his identity, showing on his books only an ominously drawn self-portrait. A keen follower of Oe's work, French newcomer Alex Fayard surpasses his idol with his own work which, when translated into Japanese, breaks Oe's sale record, the first time any author has done it in 10 years. As a promotion gimmick, he is invited to go to Japan to meet Oe, even though the publishers still haven't quite figured out how to find this mysterious author. Then as always, a woman comes into all these, a bewitching and seductive geisha who get entangled with both authors.As mentioned, this is a somewhat mainstream thriller, without playing up the pseudo psychological side – a wise choice, making the movie simple and enjoyable rather than tediously pretentious. Event-driven and clue-seeking under a formulaic structure, the movie takes the audience down a predictable path of mild thrills and occasional laughs (many quite unintentional). The ending twist will not exactly extract a gasp from a seasoned thriller audience. There is no need to rush to the cinemas. A DVD will do nicely.