It¡¯s rare to come across a film title with a bilingual near-homophone that says something so telling about its protagonist ¡ª in this case, Daigo Matsui¡¯s ¡°Meets the World,¡± about a 27-year-old woman who is a fan of a yaoi (gay romance) manga.
Based on Hitomi Kanehara¡¯s novel, the dark comic drama follows Hana Sugisaki¡¯s nerdy Yukari as she is guided out of her shell by Rai (Kotona Minami), a cool-eyed club hostess with an unshakable death wish who draws her naive new friend into her night life milieu. All the while, Yukari is a hardcore fan of Korean barbecue as well as devoted to the comic ¡°Meat Is Mine,¡± whose characters are yakiniku (grilled meat) menu items that transform into handsome gay men. Her world thus revolves around meat in both her fantasy and real life, which in Sugisaki¡¯s finely layered turn is both funny and strange, lovable and sad.
Yukari and Rai¡¯s meet-cute occurs in Kabukicho, Tokyo¡¯s notorious red-light district, where Rai finds Yukari passed-out drunk and asks if she is OK. Yukari tells Rai she is beautiful and says she wishes she could be her. Rai¡¯s matter-of-fact reply: You can ¡ª for ?3 million.
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