Everyone in the modern world is empty inside!

Air Doll (Japanese, Kūki Ningyō空気人形) 2009

As the world becomes more complicated with gizmos and technology, so does inter personal relationships. Communication between individuals becomes difficult, albeit the availability of plethora of telecommunication devices.  

This drama is a story of such a man, Hideo, who carries on a totally boring life of a salary man in Japan. He rides alone in crowded train on a drizzly nights, shops alone and comes home to a empty house (err.. to his companion, an air inflatable mannequin which acts as his sex doll, Nozomi). He talks to her, bathes her and tugs her to bed.

Actually when Hireo if off to work, she becomes alive (develops a heart), dons a maid's attire and her child like curiosity makes her wonder the streets to explore the world around her.  She meets many characters who seem as empty as her, some losing their life long companion, some empty in character.

Soon Nozomi leads a double life after romantically linked to a guy working in a DVD rental shop - working in the daytime and back home with Hideo at night as his companion.

Then things gets complicated...

Doona Bae

Whilst helping around the shop, Nozomi has a fall and sustains a cut a on her wrist and becomes decompressed as the air in her escapes! The DVD boy, Junichi, inflates her back to life and Nozomi's feelings intensifies and the feeling is mutual.

Nozomi realizes that being a doll was easier, having a 'heart' makes things complex.

She discovers too that Heido (her owner) has a new doll now, after getting 'fed-up' with Nozomi. Nozomi confronts him. The last thing that Heido wanted in his life was'someone' commanding him and nagging him - the main reason he got himself an air doll in the first place! After a few exchange of harsh words, she runs away. 

After some soul searching, she returns to the factory she was 'born'. She realises that even though she does not age and does not develop wrinkles, her kind are still abandoned just like the many mannequins abandoned in the factory. She is just a substitute. Just like a human, she also has a life span (shelf life).
Nozomi and Junichi get intimate but Junichi dies in a freak mishap perpetuated by her. 'Heart broken', Nozomi releases her air from her belly and lies in a heap of garbage for the sanitation workers to pick her up as unburnable trash, just like the doll that a small kid threw into the pile. She tells herself that life was simple when she did not have a heart. The End. 終わり.

Well, it is just an abstract movie where the viewers cannot try to make and sense of logic on how a doll comes to life and adjusts to daily living. Life gets complicated when you think too much....