Showtimes: 6/20, 9:00pm and 6/25, 4:30pm at the Anthology [BUY TICKETS]

A handicapped version of TAXI DRIVER, this is the second film by director Go Shibata, and it is one of the must-sees at this year's festival. Audiences will either love it or hate it, but no one can doubt that this is something you've never seen before. Sumida is a wheelchair-bound handicapped guy whose life is spent boozing it up with Take, one of his health-care attendants, and going to Take's hardcore metal shows. Unable to speak except through a Stephen Hawkins voicebox, Sumida is an enigma. All anyone knows about his desires and personality is what they project onto him: he's pathetic, he's a pal, he's an object of pity, he's disgusting. When Nobuko, a young college student comes to take care of him for a school paper Sumida mistakes her callow flirtation for the real thing. He propositions her, and she withdraws and starts spending more time with the able-bodied Take. And that's when Sumida starts to seethe against the walking world around him. And that's when he starts planning to tear it all down.

Aggressively experimental, with a wall-of-noise sound design by electronic art band World's End Girlfriend, THE LATE BLOOMER is a digital video movie that took five years to make, which is a good thing since the director feels that his own personal prejudices against the handicapped rendered the first year and a half's worth of footage virtually useless. Shot for maximum paranoia, creeping dread, and unease the movie builds to one of the more disturbing climaxes of any recent movie. If you want something safe, then stay away, because this flick busts taboos like a cowboy busts broncos. Let's face it: cripples make us uncomfortable. We all like to talk about being open-minded, but when's the last time you went out to dinner with someone in a wheelchair? We don't like cripples because we're scared that we could become like them. It's an irrational fear, and THE LATE BLOOMER replaces it with something we can all actually be scared about: they're sick of being treated like second-class citizens, they're sick of being patronized, they're sick of being discriminated against, and we continue to do so at our own risk.