This whimsical tale of a prostitute is being billed as the Japanese Amélie, which might be pushing it. Director Tetsuya Nakashima has his own excitable style of film-making, and here frames prostitution, domestic violence and murder as quirky slapsticky adventure, complete with twittering cartoon bluebirds borrowed from Snow White. Matsuko (Miki Nakatani) is forced into working at a strip club in the 1950s and, like Fellini's street-walker Cabiria, takes whatever knocks life throws at her - in Matsuko's case it's a succession of abusive scumbag pimps and boyfriends. She tolerates them all with a stand-by-your-man stoicism that is increasingly hard to stomach. Told in flashback after she is beaten to death, with details uncovered by her teenage nephew (Eita), Matsuko adds her own simple-soul insights. By the end - which feels a long time coming - it's all unravelled into a mess of mysticism.