R100 ★★★

JAPANESE actor Nao Omori is terrific in the 2013 surreal sex comedy R100.

Omori plays Takafumi, a mild-mannered furniture salesman looking after a young son. His wife has been hospitalised in a coma for an extended period of time and, in his solitude and depression, Takafumi has resorted to masochism.

His version of the practice is bizarre, in that he pays to be accosted in public, whether in the street or at a restaurant.

He visits a new business that specialises in this form of ‘surprise’ service by a range of dominatrix, but never fully comprehends the circumstances of the contract he has entered.

Takafumi’s humorous public beatings and humiliation become increasingly harder to bare and, following a tragic incident, he not only realises he cannot back away, he must also cope with retribution from the bondage business.

Omori’s performance is nicely balanced, think Peter Sellers in Being There, and R100 gets funnier as the situations, treatment and characters become more surreal.

I particularly enjoyed the scenes of the film’s producers shaking their heads outside a screening room at the antics on display and fretting that they cannot understand the film.

There is also a fantastic cameo from American actress Lindsay Hayward as the Amazon-like, foul-mouthed CEO of Bondage Inc.