More details about "Kuuki Ningyou (Air Doll)" leak out in advance of its Cannes premiere

by Chris MaGee

Now that Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest film "Kuuki Ningyou (Air Doll)" has been scheduled to screen at this year's Cannes International Film Festival I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more news items and promotional images like this popping up. Wildgrounds has scored the above image from Kore-eda's film that stars Korean actress Bae Doo-na (The Host, Linda, Linda, Linda) as an inflatable sex doll who comes to life and falls in love with a video store clerk played by Arata (After Life, United Red Army).

Meanwhile, Micheal Guillen over at Twitch got the opportunity to ask Kore-eda what themes he was trying to explore with this unconventional storyline. His response? "The doll is inflated with air, so it’s basically empty or blank inside. She is living in Tokyo and around her are us urbanites who are also empty. We have nothing inside of us either and we are isolated. I wanted to explore the emptiness, the loneliness that is felt by the inflated doll and the isolated urbanites."

This is still one of my most hotly anticipated films of this year. It's a cruel twist of fate that I won't be able to be in Cannes on the 14th to catch the premiere, but here's hoping that "Kuuki Ningyou (Air Doll)" gets picked up for this year's Toronto International Film Festival.