By Dennis Hartley

Makoto Nagahisa’s Burn is an ensemble piece reminiscent of the uncompromising youth subculture dramas by outsider filmmakers like Gregg Araki and Larry Clark. A teenage girl, fed up with being constantly ostracized and physically abused by her strict, ultra-religious parents, runs away from home and ends up in Tokyo’s red light district. She is welcomed into a community of street kids, who, like her, are estranged from their families and psychically damaged in one way or the other. You could call it a support system by definition, but it’s a tenuous one at best, as she eventually comes to learn. Frankly, it’s a bit of a downer, but the impressive young cast commits 100% to this realistic, brutally honest portrait of life on the fringe.