''R100'' is a Japanese

dramedy film Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

directed by

Hitoshi Matsumoto , commonly known as , is a Japanese film director and one of Japan's most popular comedians and TV hosts. He is one half of the comedy duo Downtown alongside Masatoshi Hamada. Like Hamada, Matsumoto was born and raised in Amagasaki, Hyōgo Prefect ...

. The film had its world premiere at 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2013.

Plot

Ordinary businessman Takafumi Katayama signs a contract to join a mysterious

BDSM BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...

club where various dominatrices, each with their own specialty skill, will attack and humiliate him in public. The contract lasts for one year and no cancellation is allowed. At first, Takafumi is greatly pleased by his membership, but when the club's activities start to intrude into his home life, Takafumi must find a way to protect his family and himself from more than just humiliation. The film features a subplot in which a group of confused people are watching Takafumi's story, a

film-within-a-film A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes c ...

directed by an elderly man who claims that one must have lived 100 years to understand its true brilliance.

Cast

* Nao Ōmori as Takafumi Katayama *

Shinobu Terajima is a Japanese actress. Her feature films include '' Akame 48 Waterfalls'' (2003) and '' Vibrator'' (2003). For her role in ''Caterpillar'' (2010), Terajima won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 60th Berlin Film Festival while her performan ...

as Whip Queen *

Ai Tominaga is a Japanese model and actress. She has been described as one of the first Asian models to walk European catwalks, but there were models like Sayoko Yamaguchi that walked the runways in 1970s and 1980s. Career She has appeared on the cover o ...

* Eriko Sato *

Naomi Watanabe is a Japanese comedian, actress, and fashion designer. She rose to fame in 2008 for her imitation of Beyoncé, after which she was given the title “the Japanese Beyoncé”. Career Watanabe does impersonations of popular artists in Japanese c ...

as Saliva Queen *

You In Modern English, ''you'' is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers. History ''You'' comes from the Proto- ...

* Suzuki Matsuo * Atsuro Watabe *

Gin Maeda (born February 21, 1944) is a Japanese actor. He had a regular role in the ''Otoko wa Tsurai yo'' films, beginning with the first in the series (1969), as Sakura's husband. Filmography Film *''Otoko wa Tsurai yo'' series (1969–2019), Hiroshi S ...

*Katagiri Hairi as Gobble Queen * Lindsay Kay Hayward as CEO *Mao Daichi as Voice Queen

Reception

''R100'' received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

reports that 81% of 21 film critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 6.7 out of 10. Rob Nelson of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'', said in his review that "If a dominatrix is one who takes total control of her passive partner, then "R100" is the cinematic equivalent of a kinky femme fatale in black leather and stiletto heels, cracking a whip and a smile." Deborah Young in her review for ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' praised the film by saying that "It’s hard to remember a film about S&M as funny as this one, or one as beautifully and weirdly imagined." Colin Covert of ''Minneapolis Star Tribune'' gave the film three stars by saying that ""To call this Midnight Movie entry "not for everyone" is understating it. But connoisseurs of weird, twisted sex comedy will revel in its transgressive, audacious mischief." Katie Rife of

The A.V. Club ''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...

gave the film a B+.

Release

The film premiered on September 12, 2013 on the

Toronto International Film Festival The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...

and was released on March 3, 2015 on Blu-ray Disc in a

1080p 1080p (1920×1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen ve ...

video format and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

over Drafthouse Films.

References

External links

Official website
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:R100 2013 films 2013 comedy-drama films Japanese comedy-drama films Films directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto 2013 comedy films BDSM in films 2010s Japanese films