95 minutes, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles
Directed by: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Shinobu Terajima, Nao Omori

Showtimes: MON June 21 - 8:30pm; SAT June 26 - 6:00pm [BUY TICKETS]

Every now and then a movie is so far ahead of the pack that you just can't see the pack anymore. VIBRATOR is winning awards left and right and has appeared on virtually every single Japanese "best of" list for 2003. If a movie that aches with this much heart can be universally loved it gives you hope for the whole stinking human race.

Rei is a bulimic, alcoholic freelance writer, and one night in a convenience store she develops an instant "stranger crush" on a trucker who passes her in the aisle. Hoping for a little NSA nookie, she follows him out to his truck and the two hook up. The trucker's a decent guy, and when he extends a post-coital invite to join him on the road for a few days she surprises herself and says "yes." The movie plays out on the road, on loading docks, and in cheap hotels as the two of them slowly lower their guards, drop their acts and, in a state of mutual psychological exhaustion, the basket case chick, and the self-aggrandizing trucker become human. That's all the movie's about, two people who make a real connection. But VIBRATOR is a movie MacGyver, building transcendence out of the most unlikely materials: convenience stores, awkward conversations, Mack trucks, CB radios and a cell phone set to "vibrate".

Despite its energetic arsenal of voice-overs, title screens, fantasy sequences and x-ray shots this flick is completely driven by the actors -- if they weren't perfect and if the director didn't have the good sense to stay out of their way, this movie would be a damp squib. But they are perfect, and so we get pyrotechnics instead. Shinobu Terajima is a stage actress and Rei is instantly recognizable as every woman: brave, but full of self-doubt; eager for something to happen, but scared of change; married to her demons, but desperate to get rid of them. Nao Omori (Ichi the Killer of Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer) plays the trucker, Okabe, and he's the contradictory guy we've all met: kind and self-important, a good listener but an egotistical talker, confrontational and in hiding from his own failed life ­ you don't know whether you want to kiss him or kill him.

VIBRATOR is a loopy, liberating ride, sporting a case of aesthetic and emotional bedhead. In the end, the movie makes no promises, comes to no grand realizations and doesn't do anything except be honest. But with most movies trumpeting bland aphorisms in place of stories and ideas (BE TRUE TO YOURSELF; LOVE CONQUERS ALL; YOU CAN'T BUY HAPPINESS) a movie that performs the simple, quiet act of being honest burns through a world of motion picture crap like a nuclear explosion. This one is a small miracle for weary, movie-going souls.