Written Face (The)

Onnagata, in the tradition of Japanese theater, are men who play female characters. Tamasaburo Bando is one of the most famous Onnagata, able to interpret female figures not on the basis of an idea of imitation but to catch their real essence and return it through dance, movement, gaze.

Daniel Schmid travels to Japan to capture the deepest philosophy of Onnegata’s art, giving up on the classic documentary structure but focusing on the performances of Bando and other artists, in order to survey what identity and sexual gender mean in the magical realm of the stage of Kabuki theater. The solutions are not simple, and they find in this extraordinary tradition not a substitute plan to distance women from acting, but an enriching opportunity to explore the boundaries between the essence of the feminine and its perception, while the film builds a highly refined formal apparatus that mesmerizes.

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