Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2010

Another Steven Soderbergh “experiment,” this bare-bones, true-to-life murder mystery involves three workers at a doll factory, which is kind of a creepy setting to begin with. It plays more like a documentary and doesn’t have much of a plot, but succeeds largely on character development. Refreshing, that. Its deliberate pacing will bore some but hypnotize others. Soderbergh elicits spot-on, unforced performances from his non-professional actors. It was released in 2006 simultaneously in theaters, on cable and DVD, as part of an experiment on ways to attract larger audiences to small art films.