Visitor Q

Part of the special series NACHTBLENDE

‘First things first: WHAT (and I can't stress this enough) THE ACTUAL FUCK!’ ToeBee on Letterboxd

Perhaps the most scandalous film by a director not exactly lacking in scandalous films. Paradoxically, VISITOR Q disturbs us with the light-footedness with which it carries us from one cruelty to the next, right up to one of the strangest happy endings in film history. As a supporting film, we are showing the New Zealand housewife's fever dream KITCHEN SINK. Prepare for a wild ride into family hell!

‘Have you ever done it with your dad?’ This sentence, the first fade-in in VISITOR Q, sets the course for the following 84 minutes, in which taboos are broken like there's no tomorrow. Miike paints a picture of a family whose members are absolute victims in the outside world and whose experiences of violence are continued or reversed, or at least intensified, within their own four walls.

The son, who is brutally bullied by his schoolmates, beats up his addicted mother at home, who in turn prostitutes her daughter. The father tries his hand at making a gonzo documentary film and realises that his broken family is good material for it. The ruinously entrenched structures begin to crumble when the titular visitor moves in with the family - no one knows exactly why...