Experience Japanese master filmmaker Yasujirô Ozu‘s thrilling 1933 silent gangster tale DRAGNET GIRL with an original score performed live by ambient/electric trio Coupler.

Special thanks to our community partners, VIFF Live and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival for their support.

Friday, November 22
Doors 7:00 pm | Show 8:00 pm

Early Bird tickets $20 HERE (Until November 12)
Advance tickets $25 HERE | $30 at the door

*Minors welcome! Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service.
**Sorry, Rio Theatre Groupons and passes not accepted for this event.
Coupler was begun as a solo project by Lambchop alum Ryan Norris in 2012. Coupler‘s original score for Yasujirô Ozu‘s 1933 silent film DRAGNET GIRL premiered at The Belcourt in Nashville in May of 2018. Since that time, the trio toured it on the east coast, including an engagement at NYC’s renowned Film at Lincoln Center.

A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him. This formally accomplished and psychologically complex gangster tale pivots on the growing attraction between Joji, a hardened career criminal, and Kazuko, the sweet-natured older sister of a newly initiated young hoodlum-a relationship that provokes the jealousy of Joji’s otherwise patient moll, Tokiko. With effortlessly cool performances and visual inventiveness, DRAGNET GIRL is a bravura work from Yasujirô Ozu.

“As the film noir expert Eddie Muller has noted, when DRAGNET GIRL was rediscovered in the 1970s, many critics had to expand their perceptions of Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese director whose gently understated intergenerational family dramas had earned him a global reputation as a master. By contrast, this early-1930s silent gangster drama finds Ozu tipping his hat to the Hollywood pictures of the period.” (Ben Kenigsberg, The New York Times)

DRAGNET GIRL (Yasujiro Ozu, 1933 / PG / 89 mins) Tokiko leads a double-life as an office typist and the mistress of a retired champion boxer and small-time ringleader named Jyoji. Hiroshi, a new recruit to the gang, hero worships Jyoji and neglects his studies. Hiroshi’s sister Kazuko begs Jyoji to spare her brother from their shady dealings, but inadvertently casts a spell on Jyoji. After several reversals, Jyoji returns to Tokiko’s arms. They decide to come clean, but not before pulling one last job to help Hiroshi and Kazuko.