Ekusute

The best film I've seen so far at the New York Asian Film Festival is easily Ekusute, or "Exte", as the film's english title is.
Written and directed by Sion Sono (Suicide club), Ekusute combines humor, horror and drama in the most innovative way and it will please even the most demanding audience.
The film deals with two parallel stories. On one hand there's Yuko, a woman in her early 20s who works as a trainee at a hair salon. One day her roommate Yuki finds a young girl waiting at their doorstep. Yuko soon discovers that the young girl that has been abused both emotionally and physically by her mother, is her niece Mami.
And while Yuko struggles to keep up with her job and with raising the young girl (who at Yuko's request calls her sister rather than aunt), a strange man with a hair fetish named Yamazaki, steals a body from the morgue. The body which belonged to a young woman whose kidneys and eyeballs had been removed, magically grows hair not only on her head but from wounds, her fingers, even her eyes. We soon discover more about the young woman when Yamazaki begins to sell her hair as extensions at different hair salons, including the one where Yuko works.

The film at many times feels like a parody of many J-Horror films such as the Ring or Ju-on (which was the director's intention as Sion Sono who is very funny and witty told us after the screening), but at the same time by dealing with the very sensitive issue of child abuse it manages to be a very strong drama as well. Ekusute is anchored by the great performances of its two main stars, Chiaki Kuriyama as Yuko and newcomer Miku Sato as her niece Mami and I have a feeling it could become an international success when (or if) it gets a wider release outside Japan.