Sorry to bring back an old thread.
I recently saw a movie called Tokyo! which consists of three 30 minute stories; the last story was about a man who is a Hikikomori. From wiki, here is what a Hikikomori is:
a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive individuals who have chosen to withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement because of various personal and social factors in their lives. The term hikikomori refers to both the sociological phenomenon in general as well as to individuals belonging to this societal group.
wikipedia also has a list of hikikomoris in pop culture if you are interested.
here is the synopsis of the film I pulled from a review on imdb.
Bong Joon-ho's the odd one out amongst the French filmmakers, but he holds his own with his story dealing with a reclusive hermit who boxes himself up at home, never to interact with any other humans, except when ordering pizza, and even then, avoids eye contact. He lives his life in an orderly fashion, and is a modern day junk collector who turns his trash into nicely stacked decorations within his household. Naturally things change when the status quo got challenged with a female pizza delivery-woman, and an earthquake which sends everything, including the girl, tumbling down.
It's a fun little love story, and a non-conventional one given the problems facing each character. In wanting to seek out his new found love, who never visited again, the hermit has got to challenge his fear of the big outside. The last memorable scene involving such a phobia, was with Holly Hunter's character in Copycat. Here, we play on the same fears, and I thought it worked in the plot really well, nevermind the almost farcical way the two would-be lovers connect. If only love were to be so easy as with a click of a button, for instant success. Not everything gets explained though, so you're likely to have to come up with your own conclusion with Bong's contribution.
stupid question,I know
