Monday (2000/I)

Japanese cult director Sabu spins this masterfully-constructed black comedy in which an ordinary salary man finds himself the victim of increasingly bizarre and unlucky coincidences. Monday morning, Takagi (Shinichi Tsutsumi) finds himself fully clothed in a strange hotel room with no recollection of how he got there. A small envelope of purification salts (used in Japan to ward off evil spirits during a funeral) jogs his memory as he slowly susses out what happened during his lost weekend. After the funeral, Takagi finds himself in the company of a yakuza and his improbably attractive moll. While drunkenly horsing around with a rifle, he inadvertently blows away the mobster, making him a marked man. This film was screened at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival.