Film

KASANE –Beauty and Fate–

Name: KASANE –Beauty and Fate–
Genre: Mystery, Fantasy
Released: 2018
Cast: Tao Tsuchiya, Kyoko Yoshine, You Yokoyama, Mariko Tsutsui, Tomoko Ikuta

Fantasy

A Japanese fantasy-mystery about a plain-faced actress who inherits her mother's magical lipstick—apply it, kiss someone, steal their face. When she encounters a beautiful but talentless rival, their fates collide in ways neither could predict. It's visually sumptuous, genre-blending cinema that treats transformation as both curse and gift, asking uncomfortable questions about beauty, ambition, and the price of getting what you want.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy glossy, slightly absurd melodrama about looks, envy and the theatre of appearance, where the rivalry carries more weight than the magic.

Skip it if you want a fast, clean genre thriller, since this one lingers on stage-world jealousy and moves at a deliberately heightened, theatrical pace.

What it asks of you: Expect about 112 minutes of heightened, stylised melodrama that asks you to accept its premise without fussing over how it works, and to stay with its jealousy.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Paprika2006

Satoshi Kon's dazzling fantasy about identity and desire bleeding into reality. Like Kasane, it's obsessed with transformation, masks, and the thin line between self and other. Visually intoxicating.

But The narrative gets deliberately fractured and abstract in the final act. If you need plot clarity, this will frustrate you.

Arrival2016

Thoughtful science-fiction about communication and the weight of knowledge. Shares Kasane's interest in how choice and fate intertwine, told with intelligence and emotional depth rather than spectacle.

But Slow-burn cerebral drama. The reveal reframes everything, which some find brilliant and others find gimmicky.

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's masterpiece of longing and surfaces. Every frame is composed like a painting. It understands that what we see—clothes, faces, the way light catches skin—is how we communicate desire.

But Almost no plot. It's mood and style sustained for two hours. If you need narrative momentum, you'll feel marooned.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from KASANE –Beauty and Fate–

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Mulholland Drive2001

Both films pit plain intelligence against beautiful incompetence and ask what happens when those categories collapse. Both treat Hollywood/performance as a space where identity becomes fungible.

David Lynch's three-hour fever dream about identity, Hollywood, and beautiful women destroyed by the industry. Fractured narrative about two women whose lives become dangerously entangled. Hypnotic and genuinely haunting.

But Notoriously difficult and deliberately refuses to cohere into sense. The runtime is substantial. If you hate ambiguity and require resolution, this is torture.

The Handmaiden2016

Park Chan-wook's intricate con-artist thriller set in 1930s Korea. Multiple identities, deception, and women using appearances as weapons. Gorgeously crafted with genuine surprises and complex female characters.

But Two hours forty minutes and deliberately convoluted. The twist requires you to rewatch to appreciate it, which not everyone enjoys.

A Tale of Two Sisters2003

South Korean horror-fantasy about sisters, mirrors, and fractured identity. Visually haunting, psychologically unsettling, and more interested in atmosphere and psychological horror than jump scares.

But Ambiguous and dreamlike—it doesn't explain itself. The true nature of events is left deliberately unclear, which frustrates plot-focused viewers.

The Shape of Water2017

Guillermo del Toro's romantic fantasy about desire and transformation. Celebrates the strange and overlooked. Beautiful production design and a central romance that's genuinely tender and strange.

But The romantic element between human and non-human creature unsettles some viewers. Also fairly slow-paced for what could be a thriller.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer2006

Visually stunning adaptation about obsession and the impossibility of capturing beauty. Uses scent as a metaphor the way Kasane uses a face. Gothic, ambitious, deeply weird.

But The protagonist is deliberately unsympathetic and the third act goes into genuinely dark territory. Also quite long and sometimes feels overstuffed.

Crimson Peak2015

Del Toro again, this time blending gothic romance with mystery. Lush production, genuine atmosphere, and female characters who are neither helpless nor villainous but caught in complicated webs of desire.

But Marketed as horror but plays as haunted melodrama. If you want scares, you'll be disappointed. Also fairly predictable beneath the style.

Raw2017

French-Belgian body-horror film about appetite, identity, and what we inherit. Cannibalism as metaphor for desire and transformation. Bold, strange, visually striking filmmaking from debut director Julia Ducournau.

But Contains genuinely graphic and disturbing imagery. Slow and repetitive in places. The title isn't metaphorical—it commits fully to its premise.

The Wailing2016

Both films use the mystery of the face—who is this person really?—as their central engine. Both suggest that appearance can be a mask for something unknowable, and that truth might be irrecoverable.

South Korean mystery-horror from Na Hong-jin about a village plagued by murder and a mysterious woman. Baroque, methodical, theologically complex. Uses faces and appearance as tools of deception and revelation. Genre-defying and hypnotic.

But Two hours forty-eight minutes. The plot is deliberately obscured. Multiple readings are possible and the film gives no clear answers. Morally and narratively murky in ways that infuriate some viewers.