Round 3: Tossup 9

In this film, a security guard stares blankly at his desk vibrating during an earthquake, which seems to be caused by a man smashing a stool into his room’s heating unit. While the protagonist sits in a car outside a scrapyard, this film abruptly cuts to shots of his wife listening to Spanish audio lessons and (15[1])the corpse of a monkey attached to a bathtub, but only for a split second each. Every scene in this film set in its protagonist’s flat is accompanied by the low hum of his dryer unit running an empty load. A whimsical piano riff plays over shots of a man detaching a pipe after this film’s opening scene, in which a woman recounts the tale of (*) Bluebeard to a therapist. This film’s antagonist, who appears to suddenly manifest on an empty beach and repeatedly asks questions like “who are you?”, mesmerizes a teacher, policeman, and doctor using nothing but a lighter. For 10 points, a detective investigates murders involving the letter X in what film by Kiyoshi Kurosawa? ■END■ (0[1])

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