I really did enjoy this movie. I did but...This movie followed one of the more popular themes in the Japanese movies I've seen: loneliness and unfulfillment/inadequacy. But it wasn't as deep. Sometimes I felt like I didn't even know what the characters were feeling or even why. Something was missing.The thing about this movie that bothered me was that there were just so many missed opportunities to really reach home (I don't really know how else to say it.) The movie brings in many minor characters, all of which Nozomi has brief encounters with, to show you their loneliness. But why? Why show these extremely underdeveloped characters who we know near nothing about? Maybe if they had delved deeper in to their lives by increasing their interactions with Nozomi or by having them have "actual" interactions with her(like they had done with the one of the minor characters).Nozomi also seemed a bit "flat" to me. Maybe this was on purpose? Either way, I wanted to see her grow more. She had gained a heart and she did not seem to have used it much. It was as if she was only half alive. She never cried, screamed or expressed any other emotions sans sadness, child like joy/wonder and there is more than that to being human. If they wanted viewers to understand/feel the loneliness that the characters were experiencing they should have built up the story more. Like was there even a climax?Nevertheless, this was a good movie! If you are thinking of watching this please do! It was a cute and sad story.

Having read nothing but good things about this movie, I decided to add it to my movie collection, so I purchased it from Amazon. And it was with a high amount of expectation that I sat down to watch the movie.And now that I have seen it, I sit here with a somewhat disappointing taste in my mouth. The movie was not really all that great as it was hyped up to be. At least not in my opinion.The story is about Nozomi, a blow-up sex doll, who comes to life and starts exploring the world taking in every single experience for the first time.I will say that the storyline was interesting, but it just left too many plot holes open and it also had too many things going on where you would wonder just how would that come to be or why wouldn't anyone notice that something fishy was going on. In overall, then the storyline tried to accomplish a bit too much compared to what it delivered.What made the movie work for me, at least, was the images and the cinematography. The movie was really beautifully shot, and it was quite dynamic. There are some really nice shots in the movie.As for the acting, well they had some good enough people on the cast list, but I wouldn't really say that there was anything outstanding here. Good performances all around.On a different note, then the movie does come off as interesting in the sense that some people actually do have these 'real dolls' and treat them as actual people. Which, to me, is just hilarious, and the movie does tackle this strange phenomena in a nice enough manner."Air Doll" has a semi-fun story to tell, but it is the type of movie that you watch once, and don't pick it up again at a later time, because the movie just doesn't have that much to offer.

Hideo, a waiter for a restaurant, lives a lonely existence. He does not appear to have any friends with whom to meet, but he concentrates all his attention in Nozomi, an inflatable doll that is designed for people like him. It is a sexual toy which gives him the comfort, and release, he would have to pay by visiting a 'real' person, a prostitute who will provide what Nozomi gives him freely. The waiter's universe is centered in his small apartment in an unfashionable part of Tokyo, far from the glitter and noise from more affluent areas. One day, when Hideo is away at work, Nozomi wakes up. Taking small steps she goes to the window. It has been raining, so she feels the rain drops that have accumulated. The sensation, is something she has never experienced.Nozomi feels as though a new life has been injected to her body. She intuits she suddenly has a heart. Observing the life outside her modest dwelling inspires to go on. She meets a father with a young daughter, a woman with eating disorders, an old man at a park overlooking the water, but it is Junichi, the clerk of a video shop that captures her imagination. Junichi has a secret of his own and he identifies with Nozomi immediately. Nozomi feels betrayed when she returns home to find a substitute in Hideo's bed. She is not as important anymore. She decides to track down the man who made her. When she does, she is in for another surprise. The doll maker is blunt in telling Nozomi what is basically his belief and what he hopes to accomplish by making the dolls. Eventually, losing Junichi, Nozomi's life is not worth living. She ends up among the discarded bags of garbage that are not recyclable.An interesting parable by Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda, who wrote the screenplay based on a manga by Joshile Goda. The film examines the empty lives of people in a society like the Japanese where spending something like 5,700 yen in the purchase of the doll for sexual gratification is something not too far fetched. In a city of such large population, Tokyo must be a place where individuals without social skills can be ostracized from the mainstream, which seems to be the theme behind the story. Although a bit long, the film surprises in the way the subject matter is treated.Best of all is Doona Bae, whose intelligent approach to Nozomi shows an actress with an amazing range who transform in front of our eyes becoming a woman. Arata and Itsuji Itao are good as Junichi and Hideo. The film kept reminding this viewer of another American film about the same subject, 'Lars and the Real Girl', which had a different tone, but dealt with a man that falls in love with an inflatable doll, something that does not happen in this picture.

In the early 70's I used to wander in and out of sex shops in Soho London. One of the high-ticket objects that always caught my eye was the rubber blow-up dolls labelled "sailors help". I always tried to imagine a lonely sailor having sex with this travesty of an imaginary woman. What particularly puzzled me was:- "how is the doll more satisfying than masturbation with the hand?". I concluded that all its contrivance was superfluous, and that those that used the doll, must need to create a highly complex artificial world. Koreeda's movie,which I viewed exactly forty years since I last looked at a "sailor's help", features certain technological advances - the skin tones are more life-like and the latex is less rubbery, the hair and make-up is more convincing - apart from these minor alterations its the same old dumb doll.Koreeda, whose poetic imagination is different to mine, wondered about many magical and profound possibilities, when he encountered his first sex doll. I can only analyze these from a Western point of view. A Chef is portrayed interacting with his doll. Apart from the sexual act, in which we are introduced to the snap in, snap out, washable vagina, we are made privy to his affection and warm intimacy with his inanimate doll. All his emotional needs are fulfilled in his totemization of his latex goddess. What gives the doll life is the "blow job" he regularly gives the doll, in the inflation process. This introduction is well acted and convincing.Then, the fairy tale begins, as the doll is, in the Ancient Egyptian manner, transformed with "pneuma" into a living being. How is she different? Well for one her breasts change from the usual silicone bag shape {the ubiquitous Hollywood look} to a natural form of great beauty - this "live" doll is a magnificent apparition of womanly grace and archetypal form - she's not big, brash and in your face, but, instead she has a bird-like elegance, that lovers of the nude, will find breathtaking {at least I did}. The fairy tale now progresses into a portrait of what this beautiful woman , who is still a doll, but is also a gorgeous woman, will experience in a world of intense emotional discipline. The Tokyo setting is appealing and the music has a wind up clock, musical box feel, {imagine a twirling ballerina accompanied by the Nutcracker Suite on top of a musical box}. This is very effective and calls ones attention to the mechanical in the doll.The director Koreeda ponders about the realities of urban Tokyo life with its density and its order. The life of the libidinous search for sexual gratification is controlled by the harmless sublimation of sexual energy into the doll {with its washable vagina} reminiscent of the condom, - especially the female condom, the femidom.The "living doll" has many adventures dressed {in fashionable Tokyo style}, or amazingly in the nude, as the slow, but, beautiful movie lets you see her evolution into a fully-fledged womanhood. Here we come to the genius of this movie, which is the erotocization of "air". It all makes logical sense that the air doll is turned on by air. Her tumescence and detumescence is a pneumatic event , while humans have blood running through their veins, the doll has air. These sexual scenes portraying her sexuality, illustrating the strength of her intake and the weakness of her air loss. It is so resonant of so much that is human, that, it is nothing short of dazzling.The Japanese samurai tradition {see Paul Schrader's Mishima} is confirmed in the fetish of the belly-button, {solar plexus}, and the seppuku ending, with the doll trying to reach her lovers life, through the vestige of his umbilical cord.I am not sure whether I have done this lyrical, poetic inspiration justice, but it certainly is a touching paean to human frailty and the "doll" is an awesome vision to behold. She gives a moving performance in a difficult role to pull off convincingly. The director must be congratulated {with his cinematographer} for an intelligent excavation of the difference between feeling and lack of feeling. This movie will appeal to both genders as it navigates uncharted waters in the field of the human psyche. An exhilarating experience that lives on way after the curtain closes.