A scoundrel lowlife who years back had a minor success as indie film director, struggles to keep relevant as a filmmaker, while he works as an acting teacher exploiting his students and sleeping with all the wanna-be actresses making them false promises of turning them into the stars of movies that he will never direct. Until one day, his miserable existence seems to have a stroke of luck, when two promising students arrive to his classes, an aspiring and naive script writer, who brings a brilliant scrip under his arm that can become in a fantastic project, and a young aspiring actress who has everything to become a star, whom this Lowlife director will try turn on his muse with fatal consequences.
Writing and directed by Eiji Uchida, the film gives a different view of movie industry lacking of the idealization of some other meta stories that finds to inspire the viewer to dream about being a filmmaker and become in a creator of dreams, but ignoring that behind of the many stories we see on the screen, there are countless of broken dreams and deception. Uchida delivers a less glamorous insight look that will make you wish to never be part of such a disgusting industry in which most of the people that takes part on it are truly despicable, giving away its darkest side full of struggles that you can´t win, from the perspective of those losers that can´t let it go despite of their lack of success, just because although that the art of filmmaking is a constant battle that you can´t lose, is as addictive as crack. A simple and direct portrait of what is hidden in an industry full of aspirants and very few opportunities, where people is ready to do anything in order to advance in their career, and amorality is the key that opens all doors …
This demystifying vision of the film industry keeps throughout the whole film a very dark and pessimistic tone, however it does not skimp on adding a good dose of cynical humor to a plot so full of pathos, presenting us a protagonist with whom it is impossible to empathize , a vocational loser who always manages to fail even with everything on his favour.
A film that does not seek to redeem lowlifes, or even to give them dignity, but to show them as they are, with their many defects and few virtues, in a really devilishly enjoyable feature that brings into the screen great doses of entertainment full of heartbreaking reality.
