Third Window's Director's Company Releases - The Second Wave

Last week Third Window teased three new Directors Company releases, as well as screenings for Sogo Ishii's The Crazy Family in cinemas, if you are lucky (and I was).

Today we learned the results, one of which should come as no surprise.

• Releasing May 20th is the first of a Shinji Somai duo of releases: Luminous Woman (and check-out that luminous blu-ray cover...)
• June 17th gives us - feigned shock surprise - Sogo Ishii's The Crazy Family
• Completing the Somai double-bill 22nd July graces us not just with summer but Love Hotel

Want to see and know more? Well step this way for shamelessly stolen synopses and trailers for all films!

Luminous Woman
A burly hulk of a man (pro-wrestler Keiji Muto) makes his way from Hokkaido to the decrepit trash heaps of outer Tokyo in a quest to find his beloved fiance, but meets a nightclub diva who has lost the ability to sing. When he finds himself pulled into the gladiator pits of a Tokyo nightclub, the mountain man agrees to fight in exchange for information on his lost love, yet also finds himself drawn to the various pulls of the big city. This unconventional love story employs powerful imagery in a daring attempt to visualize the contrast between people who live in concert with nature, and those who live in urbanized civil society.

The Crazy Family
The Kobayashi family finally are able to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment to the suburban house of their dreams. But things are not as perfect as they seem: the house is infested by termites and the family starts going crazy: Son Masaki is studying so obsessively for his exams that he’s losing his mind; daughter Erika is oblivious of all but her forthcoming record company audition, grandfather Yasukuni starts getting World War II flashbacks and father Katsuhiko is so worried about his family’s “sickness” that he thinks can only be cured by group suicide. As the Kobayashis’ house begins to crumble, so does the sanity of its inhabitants. Katsuhiko takes it upon himself to keep them from the asylum…at any cost.

Love Hotel
After Tetsuro loses his business, the yakuza collect his debt in the most violent, shocking way imaginable. Honorably, he divorces his wife and becomes a taxi driver. Existing bereft of meaning or support, he eventually encounters Nami, a part-time prostitute who has undergone similar tribulations. An existential study of two lonely and tortured souls, Somai’s melancholic roman porno follows the pair as they kindle a newfound friendship amid the chaos of their broken and dispirited lives.

The trailer for this is naughty and you have to watch it on Youtube here. 

All Third Window Directors Company releases rather usefully available in one place over on the Terracotta Store.