For years Ushio Shinohara has been one of the leading and most underappreciated alternative artists in Japan and New York City with an wildly esoteric style. For many of those years his wife Noriko has been a faithful companion to this idiosyncratic man but grew want to be more. This film covers the relationship of these special couple as Ushio struggles for commercial success on his own terms. Meanwhile we also follow Noriko pursuing her own artistic vision with her semi-autobiographical line art project that reveals much about her own soul as eloquently as her husbands work.
Review
a lie that has this man maintained 80 years a mirage that has fooled this woman for 58 years. my my my what a pathetic story about a Japanese immigrants who have been considering themselves as artists. i couldn't help thinking when people who hate American fast food chain they usually cursed with a sentence "garbage in garbage out". this is exactly what this pathetic couple who consider themselves artists. i have to add one more sentence to nail these kind of people who call themselves artists making junk out of junk. their whole lives are just based upon an unrealistic whim a modern day tragic fact for so many people who consider themselves with artistic talents. this old guy could not get out of his hobbit of making ugly cardboard motor bikes punching canvas with boxing gloves to create some meaningless color dots. he just kept punching the canvas on the wall without any thinking and creativity. his socalled art is just like a spoiled brat falls in love with color paints industrial glue or epoxy and cardboard the ultimate insult to art. and this woman who creates 'cutie' cartoon is also got no talent at all. their whole lives together is just a pathetic pointless miserable lie and a blind belief that has been fooled them so long just like those who believe in the unseeable 3rd parties of the world a ridiculous religion burdened them for their whole lives. the bullie is nothing but a male shauvinist pig while cutie the woman with long grey hair a typical oriental woman who never got a say in her life. the most pathetic result of their lives is that they have created nothing but a lame duck like alcoholic son a useless hopeless goodfornothing drunk. this family is nothing but a joke. they are just average nontalent people fooled by their own foolishness no wonder they have to struggle their whole lives and getting nowhere. "know thyself" is the only medicine they should take.