Synopsis
Her pupils murdered her daughter. She will have her revenge.
A psychological thriller of a grieving mother turned cold-blooded avenger with a twisty master plan to pay back those who were responsible for her daughter's death.
Confessions
2010 ‘告白’ Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima
Cast
Director
Producers
Yuji Ishida Genki Kawamura Yutaka Suzuki Minami Ichikawa Hiroaki Kitano Kôji Hyakutake Yoshishige Shimatani Toshiyasu Ohmiya Takahisa Miyaji Yoshihiro Kubota Hiroshi Morozumi Shin'ichi Yoshida
Writers
Editor
Cinematography
Production Design
Art Direction
Composer
Studios
DesperaDo Hakuhodo DY Media Partners Licri Nippon Shuppan Hanbai (Nippan) K.K. Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Toho Yahoo! Japan
Country
Language
Alternative Titles
Kokuhaku, Öğretmenin İntikamı, İtiraflar, Gestaendnisse, 自白, 母亲, Geständnisse - Confessions, Признания, คำสารภาพ, 고백, Confessions: The Secrets of Machiko
Popular reviews
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To even think of opening a movie with a 25min monologue is bold, to pull it of to such an effect is scary.
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Any movie containing Radiohead's Last Flowers to the Hospital, not once, but twice, automatically receives close to a five star rating from me, haha.
No, but seriously, this movie is absolutely amazing, from the complex plot to the believable performances to the bipolarity of tone; I just stayed up 'till 4:30 in the morning watching it... and I have class in the morning. Fuck.
Oh, did I mention Bach's Concerto No. 5 in F Minor?
Oh, did I mention The xx's Fantasy?Tetsuya Nakashima's music supervisor
most definitely knows what's up. -
"From now on, your reformation begins one step at a time."
That's one of the very final lines spoken in Confessions. For quite a few years I was a very devoted follower of J-Horror and K-Horror films. My interest was sparked by the very first Ring movie, as I'm sure that was the case for many other people too.
After that I consumed a lot more horror films from Japan and South Korea, and a few bits and pieces from other countries in south-east Asia, enjoying a few of them but with most of them just being left with a feeling of, "Meh. I've seen this one about 25 times already." Yet I kept going with them, perhaps mostly out…
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Houses move and houses speak,
if you take me there you'll get relief.
The ultimate nakashima experience: evil redefined. Starts right off the bat with the first confession, immediately setting up the film's somber and oppressive atmosphere, exposing teen angst in its most rampantly aggresive, most heartless, most murderous form. The entire classroom is a bomb ready to go off -- guilt and frustration mix together like blood and milk, insecurities accummulate and explode up to terrifying proportions, even weaponized at one point. This is an expertly crafted film, steadily jumping between aftermath and causation, feels a lot tidier and more sedated than World of Kanako but does not fall back at all in terms of shock value. If the teacher represents adulthood, I'd like to think this movie as a story about the struggle to reject it, and it is more relatable to me now than ever.
Relief, relief, relief. -
If you've ever wanted to see a revenge thriller that is shot and edited like a late-2000s metalcore music video then this is the film for you.
Confessions starts out very strong. The entire first act, which takes the form of a prolonged monologue, is so impressively constructed and delivered with such intense visual verve that I thought we could be heading into superlative territory. Unfortunately, my fears that it was too front-loaded were confirmed by what followed. The twist-laden plot about a teacher getting retribution on the students who killed her daughter does set up some interesting ideas on violence begetting suffering, moral decay and the cruel nature of adolescence (from someone who was one, I can confirm that…
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A brilliant psychological thriller, a shocking portrayal of revenge & a smartly-crafted work of mystery, Confessions makes a solid mark in its opening monologue which later goes on to haunt the viewers as well as the characters in the movie throughout its runtime. It tells the story of a school-teacher who unleashes her twisted master plan to punish the students responsible for her daughter's death & is told through the confessions of different people as the story moves forward.
Narrated in non-chronological order & shifting point of views that requires the viewers' attention from the very beginning in spite of the chaos & repelling ambience present during its opening moments, the film is carefully assembled & effectively told from start to finish. Smartly directed, deftly…
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"I think it's an accomplishment that I managed to create characters whom some viewers dislike so thoroughly, because it shows that the characters have made them feel something. It takes a good audience to hate my movie."
… and it takes a tremendous degree of anger, hatred and vindictive nature for a man to envision such a bleak, miserable world where human lives have little to no value, for children, for the children! The intention is still muddy to me, was it for self-indulgence or criticism, or, wait, surely it can't be both? Director tetsuya nakashima did mention before: entertainment will always be his ultimate goal. So why make such a dark, despicable film, where cherry blossoms only bloom in…
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Hmmm. Tough one. I had pretty high expectations for this, but from the very onset it just wasn't doing it for me. The structure of the film just irked me, making it more frustrating than intriguing, considering that it's front loaded with most of the really pertinent information. The rest feels terribly contrived, and tediously lacking in emotion outside a few big outbursts. While a few moments and characters generate some interest, I found most to be flat and sort of forgettable, not helped by a very dark and subdued color palette that gave me no more to latch onto visually than I was getting narratively (at least before on particularly effects heavy scene in the finale, which I did…
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An interesting psychological thriller with a serious symptom of technical oversaturation of dramatic altercations and a ridiculous obsession with slow motion sequences, both betraying the extents that this moderately pretentious post-modernist piece of cinema could have reached through more balanced and less exaggerated means, Confessions has success at least in a number of things:
I. The soundtrack: It is amazing and extends beyond Radiohead and the campiness of KC and the Sunshine Band. It elevates the film to another level.
II. The psychological approach: Challenging against genre conventionalisms, there is absolutely nobody to root for as the film dives into a whirlpool of macabre intentions in a dog-eat-dog catastrophe of physical, psychological and emotional proportions.
III. The Rian Johnson influence:…