Three things are likely true: 1) you’re excited for Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, which premieres at Cannes this month; 2) you’re not going to Cannes this month; 3) you’ve not seen his 2013 mini-feature Touching the Skin of Eeriness, which finds Hamaguchi embracing the unnerving qualities of Japanese horror cinema, and particularly of his mentor Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Filling blindspots and easing FOMO, Touching the Skin of Eeriness will screen on Tuesday, May 19—its first New York appearance since 2019—at the Manhattan Center for Theatre Research, courtesy my series Amnesiascope. Rewatching the film in advance has revealed Touching a keystone of Hamaguchi’s corpus: its more ominous passages nicely predate the final act of Evil Does Not Exist, while its focus on dance and performance advances earlier films’ explorations just as it anticipates the deeper study in Drive My Car. Yet there is nothing exactly like it, and as the prequel to a larger project that’s yet to be made (to say nothing of its continually undistributed, not-on-streaming status) might be the sole chance to see Hamaguchi explore darker impulses.
Tickets are now on-sale while trailer and official description are below.
On the occasion of his new feature ALL OF A SUDDEN debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, Amnesiascope presents Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s rarely seen TOUCHING THE SKIN OF EERINESS. In this ingeniously concise project—the prequel to a film that is still yet to be made—Hamaguchi uses his preternatural skills for dramaturgy and staging to explore genre cinema.
Upon his father’s death, the reclusive Chihiro begins living with his older half-brother and channels unspoken feelings into his sole passion: modern dancing. Chihiro’s relationship with his dance partner grows increasingly strange, mirroring the routines invented by their intense teacher (renowned dancer and choreographer Osamu Jareo). As unnerving occurrences pile up in town, their dance takes a dark, metaphysical meaning. Never released in theaters or on home video, TOUCHING THE SKIN OF EERINESS marks the opportunity to see one of our greatest filmmakers come into formation.