Metrograph

One of the most audacious and individualistic features to emerge from Japan’s jishu eiga (self-produced film) movement and a landmark of Japanese queer cinema, after 50 years—a period during which it was long believed lost forever—Fujisawa’s surreal road movie Bye Bye Love has found its audience. Surly nihilist Utamaro (Tamura Ren) and partner-in-crime Giko (Ichijo Miyabi)—female presenting, but genderfluid and with male genitalia—light out up the Honshu coast towards Aomori after a run-in with the cops, their journey marked by psycho-sexual tension, psychedelic interludes, and outbursts of angry anti-Americanism. It was discovered in 2018, rescued from oblivion by producer Suzuki Akihiro and shown at Japan's Underground Cinema Festival in 2022. Fujisawa’s singular, surly feat of resourceful renegade filmmaking comes to us across the decades a transcendently transgressive knockout, making its US theatrical premiere.

A Kani Releasing release