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Ghost Soup
Japan 1992
produced by Izumi Harada, Takashi Ishihara (executive), Shinichi Ogawa (executive) for Rockwell Eyes, Norman's Nose
directed by Shunji Iwai
starring Ranran Suzuki, Hiroyuki Watari, Dave Spector, Ken Mitsuishi, Koichi Hayashi, Maki Onda, Fujiko Yamamoto, Naoki Fuji, Masato Uchiyama, Tsutomu Todo, Gannosuke Yamamoto, Noriyuki Shimamura, Osamu Koike, Daisuke Hasegawa, Ryunosuke Ishihara, Tomoko Harada, Junji Takada, Yumiko Fujita
written by Shunji Iwai, music by Hironori Doi
review by Mike Haberfelner
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It's Christmas Eve, and Ichiro (Hiroyuki Watari) has just moved into a
new apartment - only to find it's already occupied by Nana (Ranran Suzuki)
and Mel (Dave Spector), two weirdos who insist on celebrating Christmas in
the place, and thus they try everything to get rid of Ichiro, but without
much success. Then Ichiro finds out that Nana and Mel are ghosts, and that
really freaks him out ... but doesn't keep him from throwing them out of
his apartment (again). It's only when Ichiro finds that Nana and Mel
have left a pot full of soup behind that he remembers another Christmas
Eve, the day his granddad died, when Ichiro saw a long line of people
waiting to get soup, a line nobody else seemed to see. However, grandpa
asked Ichiro to get him some soup, and only when he saw the soup making
people disappear that he started to get a grasp of what's going on, that
the soup made ghosts go to heaven - and sure enough, when gramps ate the
soup, he was already dead, and disappeared immediately afterwards. What's
more, Ichiro now remembers the soup was handed out by Nana and Mel. Ichiro
invites Nana and Mel back into his apartment and helps them feed the
ghosts. And in the end, he finds out that Nana and Mel are actually angels
... Now that sounds like kitsch-as-kitsch-can, a Christmas
story cheesy as can be - but writer/director Shunji Iwai has made it a
very watchable film nevertheless, consciously downplaying the cheesier
aspects of his script, adding some craziness to his angel-characters, a
few amusing sequences to his proceedings, and he sees to it that the
cheesiness of his basic premise is not mirrored in his direction. All
that said, Ghost Soup is certainly not Iwai's best film, and every
now and again, the kitsch just shines through despite everything, but it's
totally watchable still.
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