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2009 > March > 12 > Entry
By Chris Garcia
| Thursday, March 12, 2009, 01:12 PM
Japanese pop culture is furrowed with bizarre enthusiasms — some cute or “kawaii,” others wretchingly perverse — that reflect an arrested, often infantilized sense of wonder. Jessica
Oreck’s entrancing, meditative documentary reveals one more outre fetish object for the island-nation: bugs.
Oreck, who knows her critters and her science, cogently explains how the creatures’ oneness with nature, perfect engineering, lovely coloring and overarching strangeness fit into the Japanese pattern of peculiar passions. She ties the bug love to historical, literary, spiritual and scientific roots, and lyrically juxtaposes electric, kinetic Tokyo with the gossamer domains of dragon flies, butterflies, crickets and caterpillars. The two worlds meet: We see a child purchase an exotic beetle for $47 at an urban pet shop.
But nature rules, and Oreck illuminates both earthbound and airborne cosmos with glittering imagery and sumptuous sensory detail — the squirm and squish, the creep and crawl, all of it buzzing on an alien frequency that languidly dazzles.
Screenings: 5:30 p.m. Saturday, noon Tuesday and 3 p.m. March 21, Alamo Ritz.
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