The farce as a genre doesn't get a lot of respect, relying as it does on wacky, paper-thin characters and a story that is just an excuse for knock-about gags. But making one that truly works as a film, not a drawn-out skit, is no easy trick.

Veteran TV director Michihito Ogawa has pulled it off with seeming ease in "Koun no Tsubo — Good Fortune (Pot of Good Fortune)," which premiered at last year's Okinawa International Movie Festival. I say "seeming" because, as the outtakes on the credit crawl show, the film's type of physical comedy requires meticulous preparation and fine-tuned choreography, as well as making the inevitable pain invisible to the audience (easy if they're too busy laughing). See the master of the form, Buster Keaton, for further examples.

If "Good Fortune" doesn't build to the sublime, death-defying heights of "Steamboat Bill, Jr." or other Keaton classics, it gets laughs with metronomic regularity, while cleverly laying the groundwork for its twist ending.