Movie Review: 'Air Doll' is Bold Strange and Fascinating

The movie Air Doll was originally released in 2009 and it flew completely under my radar. Thankfully, our friends at Dekanalog have rescued this lovely, thoughtful and thoroughly strange melodrama about a blow up sex doll that comes to life. That sounds a little like an inverse take on Lars and the Real Girl and the movies do carry a similar sense of whimsical melancholy. Air Doll is far more absurdist than the sweet Lars but if you liked one you may enjoy the other.

Air Doll stars Bae Doon as Nozomi. Nozomi is the name given to the blow up sex doll belonging to Hideo (Isuji Itao) and it is a name she keeps when she finds a heart. That’s Nozomi’s narrated explanation of how she came to life, she found a heart. That heart leads Nozomi to venture outside, even as her only clothes are fetish costumes bought by Hideo. Nozomi chooses a sexy maid costume and ventures out into the world.

Through a magical series of events, Nozomi gets a job at a video store and makes friends with a shy clerk named Junichi (Arata). There is a clear infatuation between Nozomi and Junichi but Nozomi is either too naïve or too fearful of his finding out who she really is to pursue anything more than friendship. Junichi provides a foil for Nozomi to ask questions about the nature of life, society, romance and especially about movies.

A love of movies runs the veins of Air Doll as director Hirokazu Koreeda drops numerous movie references into scenes and uses the magic of cinema to toy with reality and bring a blow up sex doll to life. The sheer inventiveness and dedication to a premise this wild takes what could be an all too weird movie to a genuinely thoughtful and meaningful place. The world surrounding Nozomi is surreal in a more grounded fashion. Nozomi meets many people along the way and those characters reflect the world Nozomi is desperate to understand and become part of.

Bae Doon’s performance is brave and weird and I can understand critics who claim that the character is fetishized to an unseemly degree. That said, I feel that Bae Doon makes it work. Her innocent, sweet and thoughtful performance gives poignancy to her scenes with Hideo and their deeply uncomfortable implications. Nozomi is a vehicle for exploring modern alienation, loneliness, and the desperate desire to connect and the fear of being rejected..

It’s a tough character to play as Bae Doon as Nozomi is constantly on the edge of tipping over into parody or silliness. Koreeda and Bae Doon pull off a near miracle in crafting scenes that border on too cute but find a place of genuine emotional truth. There are also elements of the horror and suspense genre hidden in Air Doll that I found wonderfully odd and welcome. At one point, as Nozomi is working at the video store, she cuts herself and begins to deflate. How that scene plays out is something you must see for yourself but the elemental body horror is unexpected and kind of weirdly exciting, especially in how the scene finishes.

The thriller or rather, suspense, element comes in the idea of Nozomi potentially being discovered. What will happen when Hideo finds out she’s come to life? What if they were to meet on the street? Would he recognize his air doll as a real person? Hideo seems far too meek and weak-willed to harm Nozomi but that just leaves a different, sadder form of suspense as we know Nozomi would like nothing more than to go further into her exploration into the real world away from Hideo.

Then the ending arrives and you are left shocked. I can’t spoil the ending but what happens left me in a state of complete disbelief. You might think you know what is going to happen next but please trust me when I tell you, it’s entirely unpredictable. It’s also a remarkably bold and divisive way to end a movie. Many who see Air Doll will hate the ending. I did not hate the ending. Rather, I was simply shocked and weirdly elated, appreciative of a filmmaker with such a crazy, dark vision.

Air Doll has been re-issued through Dekanalog.