Cutie and the Boxer

R

Released Aug 16, 2013

1h 22m

Documentary

Biography

List

95%

75 Reviews

Tomatometer

75%

2,500+ Ratings

Audience Score

Noriko seeks an identity of her own after 40 years of marriage to famous boxing artist Ushio Shinohara.

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Critics Consensus

A beautifully-made documentary that explores the challenges and richness of both marriage and art through the lens of a fascinating and complex couple.

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dave j

Focuses on 2 Japanese artists living in NYC by the names of Ushio Shinohara and Noriko Shinohara hence the title Cutie and the Boxer.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A touching story about the power of art and of love.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/24/23

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Audience Member

Storytelling filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling wanted to spend more time with the couple that struck him in awe over their relationship and shared passion, then share the casual interaction with others in hoping to replicate the meet via screen. A successful attempt of being faithful to the approach in uttermost respect to showcasing their artwork and manageably captured their inspirational energy and challenges that strengthens their passions. A real human story in its own uniqueness being shared, but nothing more than furthering an unexpected, casual, awestruck meeting that is not exactly significant impactful if in another field. (B)

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

06/29/20

Full Review

Audience Member

What a great movie and an interesting look into the lives of two artists!

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/21/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Whenever I hear that a couple has been married for a long time, say 40 or 50 or even 60 years, my mind tries to consider how such a thing is possible. What keeps people together? How do they manage a marriage that takes up 80% of their lives? How do you settle with another person indefinitely? How do you deal, year after year, with someone who drives you crazy? "Cutie and the Boxer" is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary that chooses one married couple as a means of answering those very questions. Noriko and Ushio Shinohara are a Japanese couple who have been married for 40 years. They aren't quite equals. He's an abstract artist who hasn't exactly made himself a household name. Noriko seems to function, more or less, as a dutiful housewife. She cooks, she cleans and she complains about his expensive trips to show off art that don't yield much money. He throws off her complains with "Hey, it's something." Ushio's art - which he creates by punching a canvas with paint-dipped boxing gloves - is popular but, he admits, nothing that anyone really wants to buy (watching him create the piece is more fun than the actual result). He also sculpts large grotesque and colorful sculptures of motorcycles that look cool in a museum but aren't anything that anyone wants in their home. Noriko exists, more or less, off in the corner of Ushio's life. She tolerates his attempts to supplement a living making art that no one will pay money for. Oh, he makes a little, but we can see that his meager income has forced them into a cramped living space in Brooklyn, with spaces filled by his art and other assorted clutter. She complains about the cost, then later he comes home and slaps money on the table with a "so there" satisfaction. The most wonderful thing about "Cutie and the Boxer" is the way in which it simply leaves us alone to observe Noriko and Ushio. This is a movie completely devoid of talking heads. We learn about them through their experience with each other and some flashback information that shows us how they met that gives us a template of how they got where they are. They met in New York City, in 1969. Noriko was a 19 year old art student; Ushio was 40 and making avant-garde art. It was a good plan but then real life burst in the door. They got married and circumstances forced her to be housewife and supporter of a struggling artist who would spend the next 40 years in a state of professional stalemate. Presently, we see Noriko struggling to recapture her dream, drawing a series of cartoons called "Cutie and Bullie" which depict her life with Noriko through cherubic characters that are half-autobiographical and half-pornographic. Their bond is touching, but we wonder what keeps them going. As the movie opens, they have cake together Ushio woofs it down and gets frosting on his face. Noriko tells him to wipe it off but he ignores her. "I don't listen to you," he tells her. "That is how I stay young." It is that kind of connective resistance that keeps them together. They are contentious, combative, competitive, yet somehow strangely affectionate. There are moments that the camera captures that no screenwriter could invent. Take a moment late in the film when Ushio finishes one of his paintings. He asks Noriko what she thinks. "It's not good", she says. Then the camera lingers on Ushio's face, he's hurt and a little upset, but he never tells his wife. The scene shifts to sometime later and we can still see the pain on his face. Their competitive nature exists all through their marriage. That's especially true at they draw to an upcoming art exhibition in a New York gallery in which they will both be showing off their work. "Art is a demon that drags you along," Ushio says. "It's something you can't stop even if you should." What he doesn't admit is that their respective artistic visions are the glue that binds their marriage together.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

Full Review

Audience Member

It's funny that the little girl "artist" is The Great Beauty basically did what Ushio has done artistically for 50 years; the problem is one's a parody of modern art, and the other is not. The subjects just didn't interest me enough to justify this doc. Sure their marriage is "kind" of interesting, but not enough for a whole doc.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/16/23

Full Review

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Zachary Heinzerling

Director

Noriko Shinohara

Actor

Zachary Heinzerling

Writer

Kiki Miyake

Executive Producer

Patrick Burns

Producer

Lydia Dean Pilcher

Producer

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Candice Frederick

Reel Talk Online

Charming, funny with a particular fondness that is moving to watch, it is not to be missed.

Rated: A

Sep 5, 2017

Full Review

Geoffrey Macnab

Independent (UK)

This charming feature doc offers an anatomy of a marriage.

Rated: 4/5

Dec 30, 2013

Full Review

Donald Clarke

Irish Times

For all its miseries, Cutie and the Boxer - interweaving archive footage with contemporary discontents - ends up arguing strongly for the power of love.

Rated: 3/5

Nov 1, 2013

Full Review

Jordan M. Smith

IONCINEMA.com

A visually ravishing and incredibly intimate portrait that speaks on the significance of long term relationships, the meaning of art in relation to a career, and the impact of alcoholism on families with gravity and humor in equal measure.

Rated: 4/5

Nov 12, 2020

Full Review

Ben Nicholson

CineVue

[An] exceptionally authentic and warm portrait of love and creativity amid the impoverished end of the New York art scene.

Rated: 4/5

Mar 5, 2019

Full Review

Mae Abdulbaki

Punch Drunk Critics

Heinzerling chooses to focus on the couple and their art, but it unfolds too slowly and at times it feels like the film has a lack of focus, altering between showing us their art creations and their rocky relationship without a balance.

Rated: 2.5/5

Aug 14, 2018

Full Review

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Synopsis

Noriko seeks an identity of her own after 40 years of marriage to famous boxing artist Ushio Shinohara.

Director: Zachary Heinzerling
Producer: Kiki Miyake
Screenwriter: Zachary Heinzerling
Distributor: Radius TWC
Rating: R (Nude Art Images)
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Aug 16, 2013, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA): $199.3K
Runtime: 1h 22m

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