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72%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #6,202
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Nozomi and Lana share an apartment in Tokyo. They have both auditioned for the same role in a movie, and know that the shortlist has been cut down to just the two of them. As they wait the night before finding out who will get the role, their personality clashes erupt into an all-out battle.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: January 17, 2005
Nozomi (Eiko Koiki) and Lana (Maho Nonami) are two actresses sharing a two-bedroom condo in Tokyo. They're quite the different from one other in terms of personality, with Nozomi being an obsessive compulsive neat-freak who sets up numerous rules for their living arrangement, and Lana being... well, the complete opposite. While Nozomi is an honest, quiet country girl from Sado Island who has moved to Tokyo in order to start her acting career, Lana has already made her start in the movie business and uses all sorts of sly tricks (including her body) in order to get what she wants. Naturally, the two ladies don't get along very well, but they both attempt to make the other believe that they're buddy-buddy. However, when the lead role in an upcoming movie by the name of "The Yakuza's Wife" is up for grabs and these two ladies are the director's final choices for said film, the tension mounts between the two. When they start resorting to subtle ways of bugging the other, the tension level rises even more... finally resulting in a no-holds-barred brawl involving chainsaws, bleach, boiling water, samurai swords, and more. An epic battle, indeed.
<Credit: IMDb>
Yukihiko Tsutsumi and Ryuhei Kitamura each finished their contributions to the short film anthology Jam Films in record time. As a result, producer Shinya Kawai gave the two directors a proposal to each create a feature length movie with only two actors, battling in one setting and filmed entirely in one week. The undertaking was called the Duel Project. This movie was Yukihiko Tsutsumi's result and Ryuhei Kitamura's was Aragami.
</Credit: IMDb>
Even though this movie was filmed in eight days (one day over the week limit) with a very low budget, and even though both actresses were battling a major illness during filming, this movie turned out to be great and extremely well done. Just as the challenge would lead you to believe, things are also kept very simple here; there's only two actresses in the entire movie (not even extras involved), the movie never leaves the one setting (an apartment), and the storyline is simplicity at its finest. The two ladies push each other, try to play innocent while doing so, things break down between them, and then the battle starts. You can't get much more basic than that, but somehow it all comes together and we wind up with a damned entertaining film.
The storyline does start out a bit slow, relying almost entirely on dialog between the two ladies to set the stage for what's to come... however, though it is slow going there at the beginning, things are kept entertaining by the acting abilities of these females. They play their roles to perfection, with each one being totally believable in their movie personalities. Depending on the type of person you are, you'll probably find yourself identifying with one or the other and hoping that that character wins the battle. This is another way that the movie succeeds... instead of putting one hero character and one villain into the mix, we get two girls that are different, but neither is completely wrong or right. With that set up, you have no clue as to which will walk away victorious, which really helped to keep things interesting.
It's a short film, clocking in at just over an hour, but it's well worth the viewing. I felt that there were a few things that could have been changed or expanded on for the better, but when you consider that the movie only took eight days from start to finish, you can't really fault director Yukihiko Tsutsumi for the decisions that he made. Overall, this one gets an 8/10 from myself.
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