Cutie and the Boxer

OSCAR NOMINATED - BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Colourful characters, dramatic conflict and enduring love make for a winning formula in director Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, a lively double portrait of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, two Brooklyn-based artists who, after 40 years of marriage, are still creating side by side, and tormenting each other.

Filmmaker Heinzerling spent almost five years, on and off, shooting footage of the Shinoharas, without understanding Japanese. The cultural gap may, paradoxically, explain the film’s quality of domestic intimacy, squabbling and hurt feelings included.

The film opens on Ushio’s 80th birthday as he wakes to news that they’re short on the rent again and there’s a leak in the roof. Even in old age, Ushio emanates virile vigour: He’s small, robust, cocky and frequently shirtless. In contrast, Norito, at 59, wears her hair in long white pigtails and dresses in faded pastel T-shirts and loose pants, like someone fixed in adolescence.

The couple’s background is sifted in gradually, through archival television footage, home movies and Noriko’s autobiographical cartoons. Ushio was already an established artist in Japan One of his specialties was “boxing” paintings, in which he donned boxing gloves dipped in paint and punched a large canvas leaving circular splats of colour. Scenes of Ushio producing these works are great fun to watch.

Ushio met Noriko in 1972, when the 19-year-old art student arrived in New York and soon started living with the then 41-year-old artist. As they age, Ushio is determined to make up for lost time. She chronicles her disappointments and resentment through an autobiographical cartoon series. The characters are Cutie, a pigtailed stand-in for Noriko, who is always naked (“because she is too poor to afford clothes”) and Bullie, a hard-drinking, egocentric. After Noriko shows her work to the owner of one of her husband’s galleries, the curator decides to create a double show at a Soho gallery: Noriko’s whimsical, playful works will be in a room next to Ushio’s brawny canvases.

Cutie and the Boxer is a film about how opposites attract and define each other. There’s a lot that’s adorable about Ushio and Noriko, with their youthful energy and creativity but their lives are harsh and they are often harsh with each other. Take a step back, and Cutie and the Boxer suggests a dollhouse version a Samuel Beckett drama, with two aging characters in the midst of their rubble pile, desperate to be noticed. - Liam Lacey, Globe & Mail

Showtimes: 

No screenings currently scheduled.

Another U7 Solutions - Web-based solutions to everyday business problems. solution.