Dolls

Cast

Miho Kanno
as Sawako

Hidetoshi Nishijima
as Matsumoto

Tatsuya Mihashi
as Hiro, the Boss

Chieko Matsubara
as Ryoko, the Woman in the Park

Kyôko Fukada
as Haruna Yamaguchi, the Pop Star

Tsutomu Takeshige
as Nukui, the Fan

Kayoko Kishimoto
as Haruna's Aunt

Kanji Tsuda
as Young Hiro

Yuko Daike
as Young Ryoko

Ren Osugi
as Haruna's Manager

Shimadayu Toyotake
as Tayu, Puppet Theater Narrator

Kiyosuke Tsuruzawa
as Puppet Theater Shamisen Player

Minotaro Yoshida
as Puppeteer of Umegawa the Courtesan

Yoshida
as Puppeteer of Chubei

Shogo Shimizu
as Matsumoto's Father

Midori Kanazawa
as Matsumoto's Mother

Nao Omori
as Matsumoto's Colleague

Kyoko Yoshizawa
as Haruna's Mother

Kazunari Aizawa
as The Young Minion

Moro Shioka
as Hitman in the Park

Shuhei Saga
as The Driver

Al Kitago
as Aoki, the Fan

Hawking Aoyama
as Son of the Boss's Brother

Yoshitada Ohtsuka
as Matsumoto's Friend

Mari Nishio
as Sawako's Friend

Sammy Moremore Jr.
as Friend of the Boss's Brother's Son

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Critic Reviews for Dolls

Audience Reviews for Dolls

• Mar 25, 2011

  I nearly stopped watching this in the first ten minutes, but luckily once the Japanese dolls were put away, it became more of a Kitano film. Three stories about love, though you'd have to be Pollyanna to find much goodness in the co-dependent relationships of the three couples who are melancholic or just plain irritating, depending on your POV. Watch with caution if you're suffering unrequited love. It might give you all sorts of ideas.
  Lesley N Super Reviewer
• Mar 03, 2011

  When I viewed Takeshi Kitano's "Dolls" I was told I would either love or hate the film. In retrospect, neither of those emotions crossed my mind. I merely though the film was OK. I certainly enjoyed piecing together the three stories and dissecting the themes, symbolism and being taken under it's visual spell- but I couldn't help being reminded by so many other, better films. The film is about obsession (clearly taken from "Vertigo"), it deals with relationships where the couples are imploding but bound together (clearly taken from "Eyes Wide Shut"- with the same use of color and music), and it's about the emotional violence men can inflict on weak woman (clearly taken from "In the Company of Men"; "Dolls" also adopts, without the grace Neil Labute's film had, the idea that ALL women are weak, pitiful messes). "Dolls" just seemed like a rehash of better and more interesting films- granted, it has beautiful imagery, but that alone does not make a great.
  Steven C Super Reviewer
• Jan 24, 2010

  Extraordinarily beautiful, with bittersweet stories and lovely art direction.
  Liolia K Super Reviewer
• Nov 19, 2009

  You know usually I'm very open towards these kinds of films, what I mean by that is that I'm usually open when filmmakers try new things, to broaden their horizons, to just make a different film than what people are used to seeing from you. It's something that, I'm sure, filmmakers take great pleasure in doing as it keeps their careers from feeling stale. With that said, but I was just really bored by this movie. Plus it didn't exactly fit in with the theme of today's marathon, well it had SOME of it in there but like I said, this movie is the odd one out of the movies I picked for the marathon. But yea, I was just bored by this movie, there's like literally next-to-nothing going on here. The storylines, while interesting on paper, just don't come across that well on screen. They're not fully developed and they just come up falling short. Like what was the point of the pop-star and the blind man in the movie, it just seemed really pointless. The only real interesting story was the yakuza boss one and that had an anticlimatic ending, which makes sense considering the Boss' profession, but still anticlimactic (same as the pop-star/blind man ending). Also the fact of the matter is that the main story line, of the couple bound together was just a pace killer, literally every time they came on I would just shrug because it would literally detach me from everything else that was going on in the movie and I just couldn't care any less for these two. Sure the movie's cinematography is really impressive, but it really isn't enough to make the movie good, it's really just average at best. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't encourage Takeshi Kitano to do more movies like these, just to make sure they're interesting, because filmmakers nowadays need to take risks even if they fail, it might help revitalize their careers.
  Jesse O Super Reviewer

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