This Eden is hardly the biblical ‘Garden of God’ but a small tacky Bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district where some very enthusiastic but totally untalented Drag Queens put on Shows. The opening scenes of the movie are in the Bar where Miro the frustrated Choreographer is trying to put this clumsy set of performers through their routines. It is not going too well …. and neither is the scene, as it takes a good actor/drag queen to play a bad drag queen well, and these are not good. Stick with it though, as like this comic melodrama itself, they are all heart though.One of the performers has changed genders and when she gets drunk to drown her sorrows after her latest boyfriend has walked out on her, Miro takes her home to sleep it off. But she doesn’t do anything like that, as she has a heart attack and dies. The Police are far from sympathetic having to investigate a transsexual’s death, and they treat Miro, and the poor dead girl, very badly indeed.
That is nothing compared to her parents who refuse to take the body back and bury her in the family plot. In a society that puts great store in ancestors and respecting and honoring the dead, this is a major rejection. And so her friends decide to take matters into their own hands and deliver the coffin directly back to the family and insist they do their duty and honor their child regardless of the fact that they gave birth to a son and will be burying a daughter.
This wee well-intended film has Miro living in a housing complex full of other under-dogs as part of its statement that its tough to live as an openly gay man ….. and a flamboyant one at that ….. even in a big city like Tokyo. The other story strands dealing with the young female bar owner who is stalked and attacked by a predator, and the young female customer who is anti straight men after being raped as a teenager, are all about acceptance and being able to be your true self.
As well as the morals in the movie’s ‘message’ it has an energy and vitality which does help forgive the weak script and the very hammy acting in part. It’s real saving grace however is the very poignant scene when the mother breaks down and welcomes her dead child home. Have the kleenex ready.
I am a firm believer that every feature film should be just 90 minutes long, and every minute after that is ‘vanity’. This director has 11 unnecessary vanity minutes.
