Pshew.
To its credit, this is all starting to come together. It's just that what it's coming together into is very dark.
There was an interesting bit in there. While Natsuko was going through that sort of hallucinatory flashback, with what appeared to be actual memories mixed up with people with their hair over their faces haranguing her, there was one scene where she was on a sidewalk as people walked by, talking about how awful her movie was and what a bomb it was and how overrated she is and so on.
I don't think those were her memories. They were the director's.