Tag: Toei

My Uncle (ぼくのおじさん, Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2016)

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My-Uncle-p1Crazy uncles – the gift that keeps on giving. Following the darker edged Over the Fence as the second of two films released in 2016, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s My Uncle (ぼくのおじさん, Boku no Ojisan) pushes his subtle humour in a much more overt direction with a comic tale of a self obsessed (not quite) professor as seen seen through the eyes of his exasperated nephew. “Travels with my uncle” of a kind, Yamashita’s latest is a pleasantly old fashioned comedy spiced with oddly poignant moments as a wiser than his years nephew attempts to help his continually befuddled uncle navigate the difficulties of unexpected romance.

Yukio (Riku Ohnishi) has been given one of the most dreaded homework assignments ever – he’s supposed to write an essay about an “interesting” family member. This is a problem because Yukio thinks his family is very boring – dad is a civil servant, mum is a housewife, and his little sister is very frank but fails to generate sufficient interest for a whole essay. At this point, Yukio’s eccentric Uncle (Ryuhei Matsuda) enters the scene to enquire if the next edition of a children’s manga magazine has been released yet. Yukio says it has but he doesn’t buy it anymore because he’s grown out of it. Uncle hasn’t and wants him to buy one as soon as possible, convincing Yukio to pay 30% of the sticker price in the process. Annoyed, Yukio starts chronicling his Uncle’s strange adventures in school essay which proves a hit with his teacher (Erika Toda) who has accidentally become Uncle’s biggest fan.

Uncle lives with the family because he’s “a philosopher” which involves a lot of rejecting capitalist ideals and lying on his futon “thinking” or reading manga to give his brain a rest. Though Uncle’s brother and the father of the family (Kankuro Kudo) is content not to rock the boat, his wife (Shinobu Terajima) is often fed up with Uncle’s behaviour and is trying to set him up with proposals for an arranged marriage to get rid of him. Uncle is having none of it but is instantly smitten after being introduced to Japanese-Hawaiian photographer Eri (Yoko Maki). Eventually chasing her all the way to Hawaii with Yukio in tow, Uncle tries his luck with romance but only seems to get himself mixed up in even more unpredictable mischief.

There’s something so pleasantly innocent about My Uncle with its almost nostalgic tone and embrace of the surreality of everyday life. As seen through the eyes of Yukio, Uncle is not an entirely sympathetic figure at the beginning of the film. A part-time professor, Uncle talks big but spends his life rooting through ashtrays looking for smokable cigarette butts and collecting coupons to use for cheap dinners. Attempts to entertain the children backfire when he gifts them a very realistic plastic toy of a giant millipede though he does sometimes take Yukio out on “thinking expeditions” – usually on weekends and holidays to not be in the house to be shouted at by Yukio’s parents who are rapidly loosing patience with Uncle’s inability to progress in life.

If this were a series (and one could only hope) you could easily call the first instalment “Uncle Falls in Love” as Uncle finds himself finally thinking about settling down with the beautiful and outgoing Eri. Eri does seem to be among the few people who finds Uncle’s unusual qualities charming though he might need to rethink his plan of action if he’s finally to win her heart. Unfortunately, Eri is about to move back to Hawaii but invites Yukio and Uncle to visit. Uncle is desperate to go but as he can’t even afford to buy cigarettes, international travel is out. Undeterred, Uncle comes up with a number of labour intensive schemes to get there rather than actually working for the money but eventually makes it with Yukio’s help. There is, however, a rival on hand in Eri’s former boyfriend Shinsuke (Shigeyuki Totsugi) who is equally determined to win her back.

Life with Uncle may be one of constant exasperation but as Eri points out it’s never boring. Whether he’s getting himself arrested for accidentally buying weed or making up wild stories about himself in a misguided attempt to impress people, Uncle lives on a different plane of existence. Yukio reflects on all of this with a world weariness worthy of a 70 year old man but eventually comes to a kind of grudging affection for his silly old Uncle who is quite clearly setting himself up for a fall even if he has his heart in the right place. Yamashita mixes in poignant moments such as a reflective look over Pearl Harbour which gives rise to a discussion of life as a Hawaiian citizen of Japanese descent during the war, but broadly the tone is a bright one of zany humour and ironic one liners. Hilariously funny in a gentle, old fashioned way, My Uncle is Yamashita in full on comedy mode but all the better for it even as he leaves us desperate to find out what other strange adventures befall Uncle in the continuing saga of his existence.

My Uncle was screened as part of the Udine Far East Film Festival 2017.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dead or Alive (DEAD OR ALIVE　犯罪者, Takashi Miike, 1999)

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dead or alive
Prolific as always, Takashi Miike released four feature length films in 1999, in addition to working in TV and video. Dead or Alive (DEAD OR ALIVE　犯罪者, Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha) came out within the same year as Miike’s seminal Audition and though it is the latter which has gone on to define his reputation, the Dead or Alive Trilogy is equally responsible for the director’s ongoing popularity. Following the Black Society Trilogy the finale of which, Ley Lines, was also released in 1999, Dead or Alive returns to the world of orphaned exiles and Chinese gangsters, men looking for family in all the wrong places and finding only loneliness, rage, and disappointment. Criminal or cop, everyone is looking for the same old thing but for one reason or another it continually evades their grasp.

Late ‘90s, Shinjuku night life. Miike captures all of its sordid glory in a wordlessly frenetic opening sequence which begins with a naked woman falling off a building and ends with the exploding belly of a noodle loving Triad. The Shinjuku gang scene is a large and complex one but this tiny corner is about to be torn apart by the opposing forces of petty Chinese gangster Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) and veteran policeman Jojima (Sho Aikawa).

A little later, the major antagonist – yakuza boss Aoki (Renji Ishibashi), asks a drugged up woman he’s immersed in a pool of her own excrement he himself extricated by means of a series of enemas if she’s high or if she’s come down. Drugs are always on the periphery from the bag in the hands of the falling woman to the deluded hopes and dreams of everyone who’s had the misfortune to find themselves here but Miike takes things one step further and structures his film like the inverted bell curve of a strange trip. The relentless pace of the opening sequence with its constant noodle refills, cocaine excess, and eventual bathroom sex and murder combo gradually winds down giving way to the comfortably numb central section in which Jojima and Ryuichi mirror and circle each other in the murky Shinjuku streets but, as he often does, Miike refuels for an angry, increasingly bizarre final sequence as two men whose quests have cost them everything they were fighting to protect prepare to burn the world rather than see the other live another day.

Ryuichi, like many a gangster hero, is an orphan. His major motivation is a desire to protect his delicate younger brother whom he has sent abroad to study in the hope that he will be catapulted into a successful middle class life while Ryuichi takes over the criminal underworld. Toji (Michisuke Kashiwaya) has returned, but such close proximity to his brother’s darkness may have destabilising consequences for both of them. Ryuichi’s “family” is a constructed one made of other similarly lost or discarded kids of Chinese descent, all looking for a home when neither of the two which present themselves is willing to offer them full acceptance but there is no unconditional love here, betrayal is an easily applied judgement met with a harsh and irreversible punishment.

Even if Ryuichi’s world is cold, Jojima’s may be colder. Despite his wife’s pleas he sleeps on the sofa and seems to have a difficult, strained relationship with the family his life is founded on protecting. Jojima’s reasons for continuing to avoid his marital bed are unclear whether from simple consideration of his strange policeman’s hours or the hushed phone call his wife receives which suggests she may be seeking comfort outside the home, but the one thing which is clear is that this is a family already deeply fractured. Adding to the strain, Jojima’s daughter is seriously ill and his wife has worked out that they will need an enormous amount of money for her treatment. Jojima continues to proclaim that he is “working on it” and will find the money somewhere, reacting angrily to his wife’s desperate suggestion of asking her family for a loan. Wanting to save his daughter himself, he ventures ever deeper into the criminal underworld, crossing the line from law enforcer to law breaker.

Miike operates a tightly controlled approach to pacing after the frenetic opening, slowing right down before exploding in a flurry of gun fire for the climactic shootout (flying chicken feathers and all) and then taking a break until the bonkers finale with its self amputations, mysterious bazookas and strange power orbs. Dead or alive, these are men living in a furious purgatory each denied the very thing they’ve been searching for, but in the end they mirror each other, locked in a vicious cycle of rage and violence which threatens to engulf us all.

Out now in the UK from Arrow Video!

Original trailer (English subtitles)

A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (リップヴァンウィンクルの花嫁, Shunji Iwai, 2016)

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the_bride_of_rip_van_winkle“Being naked in front of people is embarrassing” says the drunken mother of a recently deceased major character in a bizarre yet pivotal scene towards the end of Shunji Iwai’s aptly titled A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (リップヴァンウィンクルの花嫁, Rip Van Winkle no Hanayome) in which the director himself wakes up from an extended cinematic slumber to discover that much is changed. This sequence, in a sense, makes plain one of the film’s essential themes – truth, and the appearance of truth, as mediated by human connection. The film’s timid heroine, Nanami (Haru Kuroki), bares all of herself online, recording each ugly thought and despairing notion before an audience of anonymous strangers, yet can barely look even those she knows well in the eye. Though Namami’s fear and insecurity are painfully obvious to all, not least to herself, she’s not alone in her fear of emotional nakedness as she discovers throughout her strange odyssey in which nothing is quite as it seems.

We first meet Nanami on an internet blind date with the man who will later become her husband. Looking lost and alone, she passively waits for her online suitor to find her in the busy city streets. Tetsuya (Go Jibiki) does indeed turn up and assume control of the situation, to which Nanami submits just as she has to everything else. Bonding over little more than their shared vocation of teaching the pair drift into a relationship and then later into a marriage, as is the natural order of things.

Though she seems happy enough, Nanami vents her frustrations in her caustic online blog. Isn’t this all just too easy? She asks herself. It’s almost like online shopping, she simply added a boyfriend to her basket and now she’s about to check out. A failure to win over Tetsuya’s mother adds to her sense of unease as does the fact she has no close friends or relatives (aside from her soon to be divorced parents) to invite to the wedding. Her decision to take the advice of an online friend and employ the shady fixer Amuro (Go Ayano) to hire a selection of professional party goers to bulk out her side of the hall will prove to be a disastrous one (though perhaps more in the short term), turning her entire life inside out.

Nanami’s essential personality trait is her passivity. Like Rip Van Winkle, she is largely asleep while things happen all around her. Though she dreamed of being a teacher, Nanami has only been able to find temporary supply roles with an agency but even this seems unlikely to last thanks to her softly spoken nature which makes classroom teaching a poor fit for her shy, attention avoidant personality. Discovered at her part time combini job by an old university friend, Nanami is embarrassed and has even been wearing a (useless but endearing) disguise in case any of her students come by despite the fact she chose a store far away from the school. Her friend now works at a hostess bar which Nanami finds a little bit shocking. That kind of unconventional way of living is not something she would contemplate, and so when offered the extremely dull but comfortable life alongside the dull but comforting Tetsuya, Nanami settles.

After Amuro spectacularly derails her non-happiness, Nanami is cast adrift which eventually leads her straight back into Amuro’s web of morally dubious activities. Taking a job as a maid at the cheap hotel she ends up in after leaving Tetsuya, Nanami also works part time as another of Amuro’s professional guests which is where she meets motivator no. 2 – Mashiro (Cocco), “actress” and all round live wire. Bonding over sad karaoke, Nanami and Mashiro later wind up working together as live in maids in a creepy, isolated mansion filled with poisonous animals. Enforced proximity leads to genuine friendship and then to more than that, but, ironically enough, Mashiro has not been entirely honest about her intentions and Nanami is soon adrift once again.

Undergoing a “fake” wedding that’s sort of real (in contrast with the “real” wedding which was sort of “fake”), at least in sentiment, Nanami looks much happier than in the extremely bizarre ceremony which bound her to Tetsuya. Nanami and Mashiro’s union was “engineered” yet mutually beneficial and ultimately genuine despite its artificial genesis. Making a last, heartbreaking speech, Mashiro attempts to explain herself and her life philosophy in a final act of nakedness. She prefers to pay for connection because, she says, the world is too full of kindness. There is so much happiness out there that it’s completely overwhelming. Sometimes there’s more truth in the lie than there is in the reality.

The resurfaced Iwai is both more cynical and more romantic than he has ever been before. He has serious things to say about constructed identities and disconnectedness, that the increasingly open nature of the anonymous online world only makes the real one seem less reliable and harder to navigate. We’ve all been wearing masks but we turned them round when we went online, and now perhaps we’re forgetting that we made them in the first place. Nanami may be adrift again at the film’s conclusion but she finds herself in a world of infinite possibilities. Emerging with more certainty and firmer sense of self, Nanami has retaken control and even if she doesn’t know where she’s going, the choice is entirely her own. Another beautifully nuanced, endlessly affecting character study from Iwai, A Bride for Rip van Winkle is a gloriously rich experience, filled with both hope and despair, but told with all the ethereal warmth and strangeness of the best of dreams.

This review refers to the 180 minute director’s cut, rather than the shorter international or four hour TV version.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (女囚さそり けもの部屋, Shunya Ito, 1973)

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beast-stableAt the end of Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, Matsu – the “Scorpion” of the title, had enacted parts of her revenge but lost even more friends and allies along the way. Still filled with an intense rage, she wandered away from her imprisonment towards the dawn and a free, if uncertain, future. It’s here we find her at the beginning of Beast Stable (女囚さそり けもの部屋, Joshu Sasori – Kemono Beya) – a fugitive from justice, but a seemingly calm one. Until, that is, she is cornered.

Beginning in an extremely memorable opening sequence, the film zooms in on Matsu riding a subway train like any other young woman when she gets spotted by a couple of policemen who decide to try and take her in. Whipping out her knife from under her coat, Matsu slashes away but is almost caught when one of the policeman handcuffs her. She reacts to this situation in a typically direct way by simply hacking the policeman’s arm off and running away with it.

Hiding out in a graveyard and gnawing at her macabre bracelet in an attempt to get it off, Matsu strikes up an improbable friendship with prostitute Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe). Yuki is harbouring a dark secret in that she keeps her brain damaged brother locked up in a back room where she is forced to satisfy his sexual urges lest he attack other women.

While working as a seamstress, Matsu becomes more and more involved with the underworld and its collection of pimps and madams, each eager to profit from the weakness and misfortune of others. Eventually, after becoming too much of a problem, Matsu is locked up again – but this time inside the birdcage of a dangerous and eccentric yakuza mama-san, Katsu (Reisen Lee), with the corpse of a less fortunate victim on the other side of the bars. New names are about to appear on Matsu’s ever growing grudge list as the wrongs done to others begin to outweigh the pain of those enacted on herself.

Beast Stable differs from the first two films in the series as it mostly takes place in the “free” world until it reenters the prison environment for the final stretch. Matsu may be out of jail but she’ll never be truly free and her intense inner rage might give her away if it weren’t for her the fact her face is plastered all over the city adorning wanted posters in every conceivable location. With no particular target for her vengeful spirit, Matsu is in survival mode but her growing alliance with Yuki and the cruelty of the underground sex industry quickly awaken her old fire.

This time the big bad is another woman – a cruel madam, willing to protect her investment to the max. When she finds out one of her girls has been hiding a pregnancy, she insists on an abortion even though the baby is six months or so along. Kicking and screaming, the pregnant woman is subjected to a horrific procedure conducted by a drunken doctor which is neatly contrasted with another abortion which is carried out with a much higher level of medical care. Needless to say, Matsu cannot let this one go and makes another of her daring and mysterious escapes to enact her revenge. As she leaves, she’s become a fury of vengeance once again – her face pixelated by the surgery window, shaving her of her identity.

Though more grounded in reality than Jailhouse 41, Beast Stable is still selling the ballad of Matsu as she continues her trajectory into legendary heroine status. Always playing a long game, Matsu has the uncanny ability to escape from any holding pen save the one that burns inside her mind. Having satisfied her personal desire for revenge, Matsu moves on to the cruelties of the wider world and those that bully and misuse already vulnerable people. Her sense of greater responsibility grows as her humanity begins to return through her friendship with Yuki which eventually becomes a deep alliance between two equally trapped women.

At the end of the film we’re told that Matsu served her prison sentence and was released, but no one knows what happened to her after that. Her apotheosis is complete as she becomes the legend – a wandering heroine, meeting out justice in a cruel and indifferent world. Kaji continues to excel in her performance of the near silent Matsu, burning with rage and resentment in every scene. Beast Stable would be Ito’s final contribution to the series and acts as a suitable conclusion to the trilogy as Matsu finally becomes Scorpion in our imaginations and, strangely, our hearts.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (女囚さそり第41雑居房, Shunya Ito, 1972)

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scorpion-2Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (女囚さそり第41雑居房, Joshu Sasori – Dai 41 Zakkyobo) picks up around a year after the end of Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion and finds Matsu (Meiko Kaji) tied up in a dingy prison basement, apparently left bound and in solitary confinement for the entire interval. Once again directed by Shunya Ito, the second instalment in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series is another foray into the women in prison field but Ito resolutely refuses to give in to the exploitative genre norms, overlaying his tale of individualistic rebellion with an arthouse sensibility that has a much wider scope than its ordinary vengeance driven narrative may suggest.

Matsu may have been lying bound and gagged in a dingy underground hole for the best part of a year but today is a special day and sadistic prison warden Goda (Fumio Watanabe) is going to let her out to be shown off in front of a visiting inspector who’s paying a final visit before Goda is promoted to a top job in Tokyo. When Matsu makes a lunge for Goda, the inspector is so afraid that he wets himself, sending the other woman into a frenzy and resulting in a riot. Once again the entirety of the prison is punished, but this time Matsu is singled out for a public punishment gang rape by Goda’s goons. This kind of humiliation is too much for her fellow prisoners who instantly turn on her, but their violence provides an opportunity for escape and before long Matsu is on the run, again.

At the end of the first film, Matsu had accomplished her first round of vengeance – against the man who orchestrated her downfall and the men who secured it, but ultimately she wound up a female prisoner once again. Though Goda may have had her hidden away because of her habitual escapism, Matsu had not given up as we see from her attempts to scrape the floor away with her spoon held tight in her mouth. Barely speaking, Matsu is an unstoppable column of pure rage but an elegant one, supported by her self contained restraint.

Her anger this time is directed towards Goda himself, especially after his despicable organised punishment rape that was designed both to break her own spirit once and for all and also to damage her in the eyes of her fellow inmates who are intended to see her defeated and destroyed. The guards are a stand in for society at large, using sexual dominance and social position to keep their women in line. The visiting prison inspector makes a point of telling Matsu that “they” don’t hate her personally – they’re there for her, to help her “recover” and become a functioning member of society. Which is ironic because Goda does hate her personally as he holds her responsible for the damage to his eye sustained in the previous film. His last act before moving on is one against Mastu – an attempt by the forces of authority to crush her individual rebellion and use their victory as a coercive tool to force others to conform.

In this way, Matsu’s position as a member of a subjugated class is less important than her status as an agitator but these are women who have each suffered at the hands of men. As an extremely theatrical sequence sung in the traditional form informs us, the women who escaped with Matsu committed their crimes out of love or jealousy. Poisoned rivals, dead lovers, even children murdered to get back at their philandering father in some Medea level psychotic rage which ruins the perpetrator even more than the intended victim.

Later while the women are enjoying their brief taste of freedom, one of them is brutally raped and murdered by a troupe of feral men who boast about the wartime atrocities they committed before descending on a lone woman like a pack of rabid dogs. The others take their revenge for their friend, but also for all the women who have met a similar fate inflicted by a male dominated society which sees them as something to be controlled and then made use of, little more that cattle hemmed in and milked until dry.

As in the first film Ito makes use of expressionist techniques and strange angles to give his film a more elevated feeling that might be expected but this time he adds in a surrealist, spiritual dimension as with the old woman who sings the stories of our heroines and then dies only to bury herself in leaves and disappear into the ether, like some forgotten deity of misused women. Likewise, when one of the prisoners is raped and murdered, the men throw her body into a nearby river like an empty beer can but the waterfall behind her suddenly runs with blood as an expression of the violence which pollutes the natural world. A bus suddenly splits in two, separating our subjugated women from the violent men who mentally sentence them, given free reign simply because of their sex. Ironically enough, our last glimpse of of Matsu takes place in the reflection of Goda’s glasses and then in his false eye when she is suddenly rejoined by her compatriots for a triumphant dance of freedom on a city rooftop.

Even stronger than in the original Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion, Jailhouse 41 further advances its ideology of free individuals battling the conformist authority of the state all filtered through the prism of the patriarchy. Matsu’s vengeance is personal, she keeps her distance from the other women who do not seem inclined to band together to oppose the forces which oppress them so much as seek a wary, temporary alliance of necessity, but seeing them all reassembled in spirit at the end brings a larger dimension to Matsu’s victory which now seems much less like solving a practical problem than a deliberate strike at a wall which was solely designed to keep a certain group of people in their place. The jail is broken, all that remains is to choose to escape its restraints.

Original trailer (English subtitles, NSFW/gore)

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (女囚701号/さそり, Shunya Ito, 1972)

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scorpion-701

Meiko Kaji had already become a familiar face in Nikkatsu’s genre output when she took on the role that would come to define her career at only 25 years of age. Toei’s Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (女囚701号/さそり, Joshu Nana-maru-ichi Go / Sasori) would launch a series of similarly themed films and create a national pop culture icon in its central character. Based on a manga by Toru Shinohara, Female Prisoner #701 Scorpion is, at heart, a women in prison film and a cornerstone of the pinky violence genre but first time director Shunya Ito has more on his mind than salacious thrills and offers up a noticeably nuanced approach to his material filled with impressive art house flourishes.

701 is the number printed on the back of the prison uniform worn by inmate Nami Matsushima (Meiko Kaji). She makes a valiant escape attempt with a fellow prisoner, Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe), but the pair are caught and put into solitary confinement where they experience torturous treatment both at the hands of the guards and their fellow prisoners. Mostly known as Matsu but also given the nickname of “Scorpion”, Prisoner #701 is not exactly popular with the other ladies in the joint who seem to resent her escape attempts and quiet dignity, annoyed by her above it all demeanour.

Matsu has just one mission in life – vengeance, on the man who wronged her, on the society that allowed her to be wronged, and on the prison system with its sadistic guards and turncoat inmates. Once an ordinary, law abiding woman, Matsu had the misfortune to fall in love with a vice cop who convinced her to go undercover in a yakuza club to get some vital info he needs to bust it. However, Sugima (Isao Natsuyagi) turns out to be the biggest crook of them all and was merely using her to try and take out the local yakuza to get in with a bigger yakuza boss and key into a slice of the drugs trade. Matsu is brutally gang raped after her cover is blown and ends up being sent to prison after making an attempt to ice her former lover with the desire to get out and complete her mission the only thing that’s keeping her going.

Ito begins with an ironic scene in which one of the prison guards is receiving a commendation for his honourable service, Japanese flag flying proudly behind above, until the occasion is interrupted by the escaped prisoner alarm. Later Ito puts the yakuza boss in a building bearing the large banner “Beautiful Soul and Harmony of Japan” and he even adds in an expressive moment as Matsu surrenders her virginity to Sugima, staining her white sheets with a large red circle. Society is corrupt everywhere from Sugima’s bent copper to gang raping yakuza and the prison system itself.

The guards are effectively running their own little empire, cut off from mainstream law enforcement and left to their own “corrective” impulses. Ito gives us salacious shower scenes and women being marched around in the nude but he places us in the place of a voyeur, making it plain that the prison guards are sating their lust for power through humiliating their charges in sexual dominance and violence. Divide and rule is the name of the game as a top tier of prisoners are “employed” in various prison tasks earning them a different colour uniform and a status bump. These ladies are even worse than some of the male guards and are responsible for much of the cruelty inflicted on Matsu and Yuki during their time in solitary.

Inter-prisoner conflict is not the central theme of the film as Matsu continues to plan for her eventual escape and revenge on the man who has ruined her life. A slight spanner is thrown in the works when an inside woman is recruited to take Matsu out, but Matsu is painted as a the ultimate vengeful warrior. Barely speaking (the bulk of her dialogue is actually voice over for her flashback scene), Matsu waits silently, observing and plotting. Biding her time she manages to take an extremely skilful and poetic revenge against her solitary abuser despite her hands and feet being bound, and when a police mole is placed in a cell with her Matsu sees through the ruse straight away. Seducing her new cellmate, Matsu neutralises the threat with ease maintaining her trademark intense elegance all the way through.

Though the synopsis smacks of cheap and nasty exploitation Ito doesn’t see it that way and films with an art house aesthetic rather than a salacious eye. Matsu’s flashback takes a very theatrical form with a rotating set and Matsu remaining present in the corner as she narrates. Her rape scene is grotesque and nightmarish, shot through a see-through floor as her attackers grin and gurn away at her like fairytale monsters. Likewise, when Matsu traps another prisoner in her own scheme, the woman turns into a classic ghost creature, face white and staring, broken glass firmly gripped manically in front. The acting style is broad and absurd. Policeman laugh loudly and for too long, blood is an artificial kind of red, gloopy like paint, and pantomimeish grotesquery is everywhere. Ito’s backgrounds are expressionist rather than realist but always perfectly pitched.

You can tell a lot about a place from the way it treats its prisoners and when its as bad as this, you start to wonder which side of the bars you’re really on. The guards are only a representation of a consistently exploitative society, but they can at least be outsmarted. “To be deceived is a woman’s crime”, says Matsu, but it’s one she fully intends to atone for – in blood, settling not just her own score but those of all her fellow prisoners caught in the patriarchal trap of hollow promises and abused honour.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Maison Ikkoku: Apartment Fantasy (めぞん一刻, Shinichiro Sawai, 1986)

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Maison IkkouIf you’ve always fancied a stay at that inn the Katakuris run but aren’t really into zombies and murder etc, you could think about spending some time at Maison Ikkoku (めぞん一刻). Based on the classic 1980s manga by Rumiko Takahashi, the 1986 live action adaptation is every bit as zany as you’d hope. Eccentric tenants, women pulled from ponds, bank robbers, and an all star dog. It’s a pretty full house, but if anything’s for certain it’s the more the merrier over at Maison Ikkoku.

Godai (Ken Ishiguro), a would-be student retaking his university entrance exams, has finally had enough and vowed to move out of Maison Ikkoku for good but just as he’s made his decision, an elegant woman arrives with a big white dog. The beautiful lady, Kyoko (Mariko Ishihara), is their new building manager. Godai falls instantly in love with her and decides to stay, but Kyoko has her own reasons for coming to Maison Ikkoku and isn’t quite ready to engage in a romance with a feckless student.

Kyoko also makes the mistake of reminding the collection of eccentric tenants that they’re behind on their rent. There are currently four residents occupying the apartment building including Godai. He’s joined by the mysterious Yotsuya (Masato Ibu) who seems to have several different jobs and speaks in an overly formal manner, Ichinose (Yumiko Fujita) – a gossipy middle aged housewife, and Akemi (Yoshiko Miyazaki) who works at a nearby bar and is almost always in her underwear. They don’t want to pay so they start coming up with plans to stop Kyoko coming after them for the money – the first one being to drug and assault her so she’ll be too embarrassed to talk to them again! Went dark quickly, didn’t it?

Despite the quirky goings on, the presence of death is constant. Kyoko is an extremely young widow sill mourning the death of her husband and has even named her dog after him. Shinichiro keeps making his ghostly presence known to her by ringing the nearby shrine bells or stealing her umbrella, making it impossible for Kyoko to move on. A non-resident but frequent visitor (played by Kunie Tanaka) recounts that his wife left him and took part in a double suicide with another man, whilst the gang also picks up another member in the form of a woman that Yotsuya claims to have fished out of the lake after she “got caught on his pole” and is now a little obsessed with him thinking that he’s the boyfriend she tried to commit suicide over.

If that all sounds a little heavy, Sawai makes sure to pile on the absurdism to keep things light and even includes a few visual gags such as a floating geisha doll during Yotsuya’s “I regret preventing a woman’s suicide because it turns out she’s quite annoying” speech. About half way through the film the entire gang suddenly decides they’re going to perform an “Ikkoku speciality” in celebration of Godai’s success which turns out to be a full scale song and dance number with everyone dressed in outfits that reflect their personality from Yotsuya in his temple singer garb, Ichinose in her wedding dress, Akemi in a nurses outfit, and Godai and Kyoto both in a school uniform, to the mysterious man dressed as a hardboiled detective the failed suicide woman for some reason dressed as a nun. Just when a big “The End” sign pops up we get yet another song accompanied by glow sticks waving in the background.

The main “drama” revolves around Godai’s attempts to pass his university entrance exams and win the heart of Kyoko though there are also various subplots concerning the odd rivalry between Yotsuya and the mysterious man over a bank robbery as well as their attempts to evade the police. Maison Ikkoku becomes a kind of sanctuary where those with wounded hearts can find a place to heal themselves. Occasionally bleak, such as in the frequent references to death and suicide, Maison Ikkoku is an absurd place filled with larger than life characters acting out their surreal existence in this shared paradise of a rundown boarding house in a quiet backwater. The film ends on another ironic note as the party goes on but the Gilbert O’Sullivan track Alone Again, Naturally plays over the end credits which is, of course, about the singer’s intention to commit suicide after being jilted at the altar. A strange if well crafted film, Maison Ikkoku is in someways ahead of its time in the quirky humour stakes but also makes use of a typically ‘80s kind of absurdism which fuses black humour with innocent, youthful charm.

Original Trailer(s) (No subtitles)

The Little Girl Who Conquered Time (時をかける少女, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1983)

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Little Girl Who Conquered TImeThe Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a perennial favourite in its native Japan. Yasutaka Tsutsui’s original novel was first published back in 1967 giving rise to a host of multimedia incarnations right up to the present day with Mamoru Hosoda’s 2006 animated film of the same name which is actually a kind of sequel to Tsutsui’s story. Arguably among the best known, or at least the best loved to a generation of fans, is Hausu director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1983 movie The Little Girl Who Conquered Time (時をかける少女, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo) which is, once again, a Kadokawa teen idol flick complete with a music video end credits sequence.

As in the novel, the story centres around regular high school girl Kazuko Yoshiyama (Tomoyo Harada). She has two extremely close male friends (generally a recipe for disaster, or at least for melodrama but this is not that kind of story) – Horikawa and Fukamachi, and one Saturday while all three are charged with cleaning up the schoolroom, Kazuko ventures into the science lab where she sees a beaker on the floor emitting thick white smoke which smells strongly of lavender causing her to pass out. Everyone seems to think it’s either hunger, anaemia, or that old favourite “woman’s troubles” but from this day on Kazuko’s life begins to change. The same day repeats itself over and over again with minor differences and Kazuko also begins to experience multilayered dreams in which her friends are in some kind of peril.

Tsutsui’s original novel was a Kadokawa Shoten property (though first published 15 years previously) which made it a natural fit for the Kadokawa effect so when legendary idol master Haruki Kadokawa found an idol he was particularly taken with in Tomoyo Harada the stars aligned. Obayashi set the story in his own hometown, the pleasantly old fashioned port village of Onomichi, which adds a nicely personal feel to his take on the original story. Although The Little Girl Who Conquered Time is an adaptation of a classic novel, many of Obayashi’s regular concerns are present from the wistful tone to the transience of emotion and the importance of memory.

Kazuko is another of Obayashi’s young women at a crossroads as she finds herself wondering what to do with the rest of her life. The original timeline seems to point to a romance and possibly a life of pleasant, if dull, domesticity with one of her best friends but with this time travelling intrusion everything diverges. Though assured that she will not remember most of the strange events that have been happening to her, something of her adventures seems to have stuck in Kazuko’s mind even if she couldn’t quite say why. Much to the consternation of her mother, Kazuko’s purpose in life begins to lean to towards the scientific rather than the romantic, almost as if she’s waiting for the return of someone whom she has no recollection of having met.

Obayashi once again uses conflicting colour schemes to anchor his story. Beginning with black and white as Kazuko has her first encounter with someone she’s known all her life under the brightly shining stars, he gradually re-introduces us to the “real” world through sporadically adding colour during her bus ride home to her small town which does have a noticeably more old fashioned aesthetic when compared to Tokyo set features of the era. The effects are highly stylised and very much of their time including the celebrated time travel sequence which has Kazuko framed by a neon blue halo. The most touching sequence occurs near the end of the film in which Kazuko crosses paths with a familiar face that she doesn’t quite recognise, the camera perspective actively changes physically pulling us away from the encounter until Kazuko turns around and walks away in the opposite direction and into yet another empty corridor.

Tomoyo Harada developed into a fine actress with a long standing and successful career in both television and feature films as well as releasing a number of full length albums. As is usual with this kind of film she also sings the theme tune which has the same title as the movie though in an unusual movie Obayashi includes a music video retelling of the events of the film over the end credits featuring all of the cast helping Harada to perform the song with silly grins on their faces all the way through. Harada proves herself much more adept at convincingly carrying a feature length movie than some of her fellow idols but the same cannot be said for many of her co-stars though she is well backed up by established adult cast members including Ittoku Kishibe as Kazuko’s romantically distressed teacher.

The Little Girl Who Conquered Time is first and foremost a Kadokawa idol movie and has all the hallmarks of this short lived though extremely successful genre. Necessarily very much of its time, the film has taken on an additional layer of nostalgic charm on top of that which has been deliberated injected into it. Nevertheless, in keeping with Obayashi’s other work The Little Girl Who Conquered Time has a melancholic, wistful tone which is sentimental at times but, crucially, always sincere.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

And here’s the famous music video for the title song (which is of course sung by Tomoyo Harada herself). English Subtitles!

Lost Paradise (失楽園, Yoshimitsu Morita, 1997)

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lost paradiseYoshitmitsu Morita tackled many different genres during his extremely varied career taking in everything from absurd social satire to teen idol vehicles and high art films. 1997’s Lost Paradise (失楽園, Shitsurakuen) again finds him in the art house realm as he prepares a tastefully erotic exploration of middle aged amour fou. Based on the bestselling novel by Junichi Watanabe, Lost Paradise also became a breakout box office hit as audiences were drawn by the tragic tale of doomed late love frustrated by societal expectations.

We meet Kuki (Koji Yakusho) and Rinko (Hitomi Kuroki) about to bid each other goodbye for the day, playfully in love though perhaps self conscious. It’s not until later that we realise they are both already married – just not to each other. Kuki, 50 years old, has reached an impasse in his life. Effectively demoted and sidelined at work, his homelife is not exactly unhappy but has long since lost his interest. His daughter is grown up and married herself, his wife has a career of her own, his mortgage is already paid off. There is really nothing left for him to do. That is until he meets calligraphy teacher Rinko and falls passionately in love for the first time in his life.

Rinko, 38, entered into an arranged marriage at 25 though the kindest way of describing it would be “unfulfilling”. Haruhiko (Toshio Shiba), her husband, is a doctor by profession and cuts a cold and distant figure. Prone to violent outbursts and pettiness, he treats Rinko more as a house keeper than a wife ordering her to buy his favourite kind of cheese (even urging her to travel to a different shop if the first one doesn’t have it) but then not even looking up when she brings it into his study for him. Lasciviously poking a spoon into the soupy mess, he pauses only briefly after savouring his first taste to give Rinko her next set of orders with no word of thanks or even acknowledgement of her success in obtaining this oddly specific cheese related request.

Finally in each other Rinko and Kuki find completeness long after they’d stopped seeking it. Rinko is unhappy in an arranged marriage which offers scant comfort, though Kuki’s problems are more akin to a mid life crisis as he finds himself an unnecessary presence at home whilst also realising that he’s already passed the high point of his career. Though there are no real barriers to Rinko and Kuki simply leaving their spouses and starting again together, it’s never quite that simple as the social stigma of an extra-marital affair continues to undermine their new found romance.

As in many of Morita’s films, the overall tone is one of pessimism as Rinko and Kuki face opposition from all sides whilst falling ever deeper into a whirlwind of self destructive passion. Rinko confides in a recently divorced friend who has guessed her secret and urges her to try and be happy, but Kuki keeps matters to himself whilst listening to the romantic problems of his workmates many of whom state that they too would like to fall madly in love, just once. When one of Kuki’s most valued colleagues falls ill, he laments having lived his life in the straightforward way expected by society. He’s done everything right – spent all his time working hard, built a career which was about to go south anyway. If all that happens is that you get old and die what was it all for – perhaps you’re better off just doing as you please, social expectations be damned.

Eventually the pair get an apartment and indulge in some part-time domesticity though an ill thought out blackmail plot soon changes things for both of them. Haruhiko refuses to divorce Rinko but Kuki’s wife is more sympathetic and open to the idea of sorting things out as quickly as possible. Though he suffers in other ways, Kuki finds it easier to accept the idea of moving on than Rinko who also faces opposition from her own mother who brands her as immoral and someone to be pitied for having given in to weakness and allowed her baser instincts to take over. Soon the couple find themselves thinking about a way to be together for eternity even if it lies in another world than this one.

Likened to the famous case of Sada Abe (also the inspiration for Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses), Rinko and Kuki are consumed by their own passion and ultimately unable to continue living outside it. Morita opts for an artful aesthetic and keeps his eroticism on the classy side rather than descending into exploitation or salaciousness. Making use of frequent handheld camera and odd angles to bring out the giddy, unbalanced mindset of the central couple Morita also experiments with colour often cutting to black and white or sepia mid-scene. The tragedy of this love story is that it occurs at a societally inconvenient time – there is nothing wrong in Rinko and Kuki’s romance save that it started after they were already married to other people. This may not seem such a great problem but in a society which demands conformity and adherence to its rules, those who break them must be prepared to pay a heavy price. Perhaps the last words ought to belong to Kuki’s poetic friend who points out that life if short and rarely rewards those who play by the rules, it may be better to burn out brightly rather than flicker away for an eternity.

Original trailer (no subs)

W’s Tragedy (Wの悲劇, Shinichiro Sawai, 1984)

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W's TragedyHiroko Yakushimaru was one of the biggest idols of the 1980s. After starring in Shinji Somai’s Sailor Suit and Machine Gun, she went on to become one of Kadokawa’s tentpole stars in vehicles such as Detective Story and Main Theme but she hit her artistic stride in 1984’s W’s Tragedy (Wの悲劇, W no Higeki) which earned her her first Blue Ribbon award for Best Actress. Inspired by the 1982 novel of the same name by Shizuko Natsuki (translated into English under the title Murder at Mt. Fuji), Sawai’s film radically diverges from its source material as the central murder mystery takes place on stage but eerily begins to mirror real life events.

Shizuka Mita (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is an aspiring young actress desperate to find her place in the spotlight. After spending the night with her teacher, she wanders home through a park and begins monologuing her life on the stage of an outdoor amphitheatre. Unbeknownst to her, a young man was sleeping on one of the rear benches and wakes up to applaud her performance. Despite her hostility towards him, Akio perseveres in getting Shizuka’s attention and the two eventually develop a tentative relationship.

Shizuka’s acting school offers its pupils the opportunity to star in a full scale production with established stars of the stage as part of their training and this year’s play is based on the recent novel, W’s Tragedy, which centres around a murder in an aristocratic family. Shikuza is desperate to win the leading role of Mako who claims to have murdered her grandfather after he tried to assault her. Losing out in the original auditions process but winning a small role which also comes with some backstage craft experience, Shizuka begins to lose heart. However, after building up a relationship with the star actress in the show, Shizuka is offered the opportunity to displace her rival through underhanded means but just how far is she willing to go for stardom and what will it all mean if and when she gets it?

Taking its cues from All About Eve, W’s Tragedy, reconfigured as a vehicle for Yakushimaru, becomes more about dualities as Shizuka effectively splits into two different “selves” – the young and innocent girl dreaming of a life on the stage, and the insecure, ambitious student willing to sacrifice anything to get there. Though clearly conflicted, Shizuka easily gives in to dubious suggestions that will earn her what she wants though not perhaps in the way that she wanted it. Her rival is shown to be a very competent actress who has also sacrificed parts of herself to attain the position that Shizuka so covets though it’s the older actress, Sho, who is the first to lament the fate of the displaced former leading lady even if she adopts a casualty of war ethos about the whole entrprise.

Shizuka gives the best performance of her life at a press conference held when she replaces the other actress in the show as she lies through her teeth to reinforce the fake story she and Sho have concocted together to their mutual benefit. Taking the brunt of a scandal just as Mako tries to take responsibility for a crime in the play, Shizuka becomes rather than performs an entirely different persona as she gives a heartfelt account of a passionate love affair with a married man that belongs to someone else entirely. Taken to task by Akio who doesn’t know the story is fake but has come to despise this manipulative side of the acting profession, Shizuka begins to wonder who she really is underneath all of the lies, scheming, and performance.

Though the directing style is generally straightforward and in keeping with Kadokawa’s mainstream idol movies of the time, Sawai adds in a few interesting flourishes which often pay homage to similarly themed Western movies such as an overtly All About Eve moment with Shizuoka taking to the stage and reciting the lead role when she thinks no one’s looking. A strange shot near the end takes place during the play but has been constructed entirely for our benefit as Shizuka looks at her reflection on a pane of glass. The audience would not be able to pick up on this ghostly effect of the two Shizukas – the stage persona and the shade of the innocent girl dreaming of the spotlight, but the effect itself is a perfect evocation of the ever present theme of duality.

Very much of its time and bearing most of the hallmarks of the classic Kadokawa idol movie, W’s Tragedy is, in many ways, the evocation of another era. However, it does provide a plum leading role for its star and an interesting meditation on the nature of acting as a profession as well as the double standards and hypocritical judgements inherent to the running of the entertainment industry.  Though less explosive than the later Perfect Blue with which it shares a few common themes, W’s Tragedy provides another set of mirrors into the nature of stardom, identity, and the price of success.

Unsubbed trailer (look out for a brief cameo from the late Yukio Ninagawa):

And here’s a clip of Hiroko Yakushimaru singing the title song at her 30 year anniversary concert back in 2013: