Cutie and the Boxer (2013)

Directed by: Zachary Heinzerling
Country: USA

Movie Review: “Cutie and the Boxer” is a legitimate documentary focused on the turbulent life and 40 year marriage of Japanese neo-Dadaist artist Ushio Shinohara, also known as boxing painter, and his wife Noriko, also an artist. Debutant director Zachary Heinzerling, also cinematographer and producer, captured in a simple and efficient manner the peculiar relationship and constant struggles of Shinohara family while living in New York City. Through animation sequences painted by Noriko, we get to know more of her story after she has come alone to New York with her parents’ money, at the age of 19. In that time, she met 41 year-old Ushio who got completely fascinated by her beauty. Since then, the couple sacrificed everything in favor of art, which always has been their priority, but continues living in a constant struggle to balance their relationship, pay the rent, and control their alcoholic son Alex, who according to his mother didn’t grow up in a healthy environment since his father was always drunk before until suddenly become allergic to alcohol. Noriko’s complains and regrets are genuine, and we can glimpse sadness in her eyes when she talks about her discontinued artwork or the inferiority complex in relation to her teacher and successful husband, who exhibited his works in famous museums and galleries of New York and Tokyo, among others. More intense in the last part,  “Cutie and the Boxer” competently represents a slice of real life, and a masquerade love story of coldness and resentment, everything for the sake of art.