Air Doll
空気人形
The Moonlight essay
CinemaAir Doll, and the Difference Between Being Filled and Being SeenRead the essayStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
An inflatable sex doll grows a heart and walks through Tokyo — Kore-eda on being used and wanting to be seen.
Hideo, a middle-aged restaurant worker, lives alone in an old wooden apartment with an inflatable sex doll he calls Nozomi. He tells her about his day over dinner, washes her hair, wheels her to the park and sleeps with her. One morning, after he has gone to work, the doll blinks, gets up and touches a raindrop on the eaves. She has a heart. In a maid's costume she walks into the neighbourhood, falls for Junichi, a clerk at a video rental shop, and takes a job there.
She learns the town by watching it: a father and his small daughter, a young woman with bulimia, a widow who brings the day's news to the police box, a dying former teacher, Keiichi, who tells her she is not the only empty one. She learns what she is, too: a stand-in for sex, a cheap, outdated model. When she tears her arm at the shop and starts to deflate, Junichi tapes the hole and breathes her full again, and she throws her pump away. The shop manager, who has seen her with Hideo, demands sex as the price of his silence, and she submits.
One night she finds Hideo celebrating the birthday of a new doll he also calls Nozomi. Confronted, he asks her to go back to being a doll: a heart is too much trouble. She leaves, and finds the workshop that made her. The doll maker, Sonoda, tells her he believes dolls have hearts, because each one comes back with a different face, and that old ones go out as non-burnable rubbish. She thanks him for making her.
She tells Junichi she will do anything for him. He asks to let the air out of her and breathe it back in, again and again. While he sleeps she tries to give him the same: she cuts his stomach, finds no valve, tapes the wound and breathes into it until he dies. She leaves his body in a rubbish bag at the collection point, peels the tape from her own arm and lies down there on non-burnable day, dreaming of a birthday party with everyone she has met. From a window above, the young woman with bulimia, who never met her, looks down and says, “Beautiful.”
Starring
Bae Doonaas Nozomi
An inflatable sex doll who wakes one morning with a heart, walks out into the city while her owner is at work, and falls in love.
Nozomi’s story
Nozomi comes to life in Hideo's flat and sets about learning what things are: the sky, the sea, a birthday, what it means to grow old. She finds out that she is a stand-in for sex, a cheap, outdated model, and she learns to lie. Once Junichi has breathed her full, she throws her pump away, hides from Hideo and washes herself alone. The shop manager coerces her into sex as the price of his silence. Told by Hideo that a heart is too much trouble, she leaves, thanks the doll maker for making her, and offers Junichi anything he wants. While he sleeps she tries to breathe into him as he breathed into her, and he dies. On non-burnable rubbish day she lies down at the collection point, dreaming of a birthday party with everyone she has met.
Arataas Junichi
A clerk at the video rental shop who breathes Nozomi back to life, and in whom she senses an emptiness like her own.
Junichi’s story
Junichi works at the video rental shop and answers every question the new girl asks as if it were normal not to know: what films are, what is in the sky, why dandelions have to die. When she tears open in the shop, he tapes the hole and breathes her full; when she says there must be many others like her, he answers that he is much the same. In his flat she finds photographs of a woman the film never explains. He tells her she is nobody's substitute, and when she offers to do anything for him, he asks to let the air out of her and breathe it back, again and again, then falls asleep in tears. When she tries to fill him the same way, he wakes, does not tell her where his valve is, and dies.
Itsuji Itaoas Hideo
The doll's owner, a lonely restaurant worker who talks to her every night and wants her to stay a doll.
Hideo’s story
Hideo works at a family restaurant, where he is told that anyone could replace him, and the grievances he brings home to the doll turn out to be about his own mistakes. He washes her hair with a shampoo that costs a hundred yen more, tells her she is lucky not to grow old and wheels her to the park. He never notices that she has come alive, not even when she serves him at the video shop. When she starts hiding from him, he searches the flat, then buys a new doll, gives it the same name and celebrates its birthday. Found out, he cannot say what he loved in her, and asks her to be a doll again: this, he says, is why a doll was better. He goes after her, but never sees her again.
Joe Odagirias Sonoda
The doll maker who made Nozomi, and who believes that dolls have hearts.
Masaya Takahashias Keiichi
A dying former teacher who spent his working life as a substitute, and tells Nozomi she is not the only one who is empty.
Why it matters
Air Doll takes the most literal object of male loneliness, a sex doll, and asks what it would be like to be one. Nozomi is bought, named, used, repaired and, the moment she wants something, told she is too much trouble. Kore-eda said the film was about the loneliness of city life and what it means to be human, and her eyes turn that question on the people around her: a man who prefers a partner who cannot answer back, a receptionist who cannot stop chasing youth, an old man who spent his working life as a substitute. Her body is used by her owner and, under threat, by her boss. The film leaves a harder question open: whether a heart is a gift to someone who has only ever learned love from the way she was used.