The solo performance is a popular theatrical genre that rarely translates to film, at least in its original form. When Chazz Palminteri brought his hit one-man show ¡°A Bronx Tale¡± to the screen in 1993, it was with a full cast, not just a single actor on a stage.

So Kazuyoshi Okuyama¡¯s mesmerizing one-woman film ¡°Reveal¡± is an outlier and, as Okuyama himself describes it, an experiment. The fact that it works so well is mostly due to the bravura performance of Kumi Takiuchi as a prostitute who lays bare her soul with a smiling

detachment, confessing both her struggles and crimes.