popran

Ueda Shinichiro Popran Drama • 2022 • 1h 35m

Reviewed by Beatrice 03. May 2023

An interview with young entrepreneur Tagami Tatsuya opens the first sequence: you cannot ask unplanned questions, let alone about his private life.

Tagami is making a fortune from online manga distribution. He has a highly attentive assistant and a following; he is cunning and cynical, but after spending a night with a girl he met the night before, he finds himself unable to urinate without the typical male sexual organ.

A small hole in his pubic area prevents him from urinating while sitting or standing. Distressed, he visits a doctor who tells him to be patient until the next day but provides him with a clue that helps him understand that there is a QR code that can draw the attention of others with the same problem, who, once found, may have a potential solution.

The "popran" hasn't disappeared but has developed its own will and decided to leave its owner.

It took him two hours to do so, using "arupito" as wings, and he manages to reach speeds of 150/200 km per hour. Additionally, after 6 days of detachment, it is destined to die of malnutrition, so it must be captured during that time frame with a sturdy net sold along with other survival gadgets for the days of separation.

Directions are also provided on how to find and capture it, while

the entrepreneur is plagued by intense and sudden abdominal pain.

In addition to the brilliant identification of sightings by members called Skyfish and the witty remarks of an impertinent boy, a kind of mantra haunts the unfortunate protagonist.

Elegantly incorrect and hilarious, this comedy tragically puts the characters face to face with the ETHICS OF THE PHALLUS.

The autonomous choice of the winged penis is extremely original and unhesitatingly reminiscent of the late Kim Ki-duk's Moebius, always dealing with the Lacanian idiocy of the phallus.

The counterbalance between power and impotence skillfully illustrates when tragedy can transform into farce and the latter into a metaphor of non-identitarian virility.

Although the moral lesson is evident and didactic, the film is extremely entertaining (perhaps not so much for the male world), and the seemingly incorrect intuition becomes emblematic for the resolution of the physical and intrapsychic conflict of the presumed eventual "innocently" unaware protagonist.

To be born with a penis is like living on a madman's leash.


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