If I hadn’t known who Terayama was, by the end of this movie I’d say “ohh, he comes from the experimental theater scene doesn’t he?”

Shin-chan is a whitefaced boy whose family’s clock is ringing constantly but they won’t take it off the wall to get repaired. After forty minutes, when the kid is running away with the married neighbor he’s crushing on, the film-in-a-film ends and its director says he’s having creative problems finishing it. Now in the present day, talking about dreams and fiction (Borges comes up) and time travel paradoxes, he re-remembers his childhood more realistically, including a flashback-in-a-flashback of the neighbor’s childhood.

“I’ve been betrayed by my own self from 20 years ago. Now I’ll have to kill mother on my own”

“My mother and I are merely characters that I’ve invented – because it’s only a film.”