Rush
Rating: * * Director: Takehisa Zeze Running time: 110 minutes Language: Japanese Now playing at Cine Amuse in Shibuya

Takehisa Zeze's "Rush" is a reviewer's ultimate nightmare: a film whose plot is all but impossible to follow, let alone describe. Walking out of the theater, I laughed -- it was either that or bang my head against the door in despair.

It would be easy to dismiss the story (the pursuit by various shady types of 50 million yen in cold, hard Fukuzawas) as a stunt. It not only reels back and forth in time, but exists in alternate universes. It seems to describe a circle, only the end of the loop veers off in a different direction. One is in the world of an Escher print, where up staircases go down and logic takes a holiday.

There are precedents for this sort of thing. Popular role-playing games like Final Fantasy may have story lines, but they allow players to wander at will through their virtual landscapes, while selecting their own weapons, allies and battle strategies. Certain books in the best-selling "Goosebumps" series let young readers choose their own "scare" among several possible plot twists. And in the real world inhabited by American and even a few Japanese "bobos" (so-called bohemian bourgeoisie), everyone is busy juggling options, from sexual partners to careers, while studiously avoiding the linear lives of their parents.