Some would-be viewers will avoid "Vibrator" simply because of the title; others will view it for that very reason. Either way, that could be a mistake. Don't get me wrong: There's some sex and passion here, but VIBRATOR's definitely NOT a "nasty film" per se. It's more a dual character study of two very different people who meet by accident and what they gain by doing so. Shinobu Terashima convincingly plays Rei, an introverted, hard-drinking, and reclusive writer who meets Takatoshi, a free-spirited, hard-edged, yet compassionate truck driver equally well-played by Nao Omori, and on a whim decides to ride with him on his rounds across the main Japanese island of Honshu. It's a quiet, subdued movie, and its wintertime scenery is bleakly beautiful.It's hard to review this film without making it sound dull and/or depressing, but I found it to be neither. Although it's funny in places, "Vibrator"'s overall mood is simultaneously sad and uplifting. People who want lots of tension and dramatic action may be disappointed here: There's no violence, surprising reversals, or any of that kind of stuff. "Vibrator" remains, however, one of the most convincing and gripping slice-of-life pieces I have ever seen. There is something very genuine about the way it shows Rei getting out of herself in a much-needed way for just a little while. I sincerely wish that there were more films like "Vibrator."

I saw Vibrator as part of a film festival in Greece.It was truly one of the worst movies of all time. The show at a supermarket, where the two stars meet and immediately "hit off", proceeding to a sex scene in the back of the man's truck. For the whole movie, the viewer watches the "road trip" that follows. Images of the Japanese countryside are all this film has to offer, and beyond that, chaos.I personally gave up on the film when the duo started a conversation on CB technology, which lasted about five minutes film time and truly wrecked my nerves.I have no idea who might find this film interesting. Lonely middle-aged women who read Cosmopolitan might perhaps find the film expresses their own ambitions about life, like going around with a truck driver, talking about CBs and the futility of things and the like. There is no "deeper symbolism" in this film, no "high-level cultural event" here. This is a film that deserves the under 100 people who have seen it worldwide.If you're a road movie maniac, go and see it. You might find it less horrible than I did. If not, pass. Heavens, STAY AWAY!

Vibrator is a movie I'd like to forget. A movie where the fake-outs and plot twists get faked-out and twisted-over so you're right back where you started. A movie that transfers, seamlessly, from grotesquely silent anal sex sequences to intricately technical discussions over the innermost workings of CB radio.There are shots in this film that make you wonder if the projectionist accidentally spliced in thousands upon thousands of identical frames. Characters sit, silently eating soup, for up to and including ten minutes at a time. It's like watching paint dry, only at some point in the course of the first act, the paint is already dry, and you just sit around watching paint for two hours!Vibrator is truly remarkable in its refusal to tell a story, to grab your attention, or event to through in a shred of music every now and then! For a movie with practically two speaking parts, you might figure it to be a characters study, but that would involve actually wiggling some effort in the way of character development.Vibrator never surmounts to anything. The cinematography, flashy at best, is reminiscent of a Mitsubishi commercial, sans-techno. The main players do fine, but are given virtually no material to play to an audience with. Characters cry, and you just watch them. You don't feel them.I walked out of the late-night screening of Vibrator from the LA Film Festival feeling drastically cheated.

I made the mistake of being sucked in by glowing reviews and saw this film at the Philadelphia film festival a few days ago. It was apparently reviewed as THE BEST Japanese film of the year by a few Japanese film critics. Moreover the Philadelphia Film Festival review touted it as a "must see" for those interested in modern Japanese cinema. This movie was truly horrible. I'm foreign film fanatic and usually enjoy the relatively slow pace of most foreign films vis-a-vis the A.D.D-ness of Hollywood films, but this film was painful. Character development was nonexistent. There were minutes and minutes of filler scenes of a truck driving across Japan. The dialog was banal and the use of voice overs annoying. If this is the best that Japanese cinema has to offer (and I know it isn't!) this would be the last Japanese film I'd see ever. Horrible, horrible, horrible.