Having only seen a couple of this director's films (Dogra Magra and War of the Sixteen Year Olds didn't impress me all that much) I was unprepared for the brilliance of this Godard like triumph. Diegetic ambivalence (is that a legal phrase?) and Brechtian film-making flood over the viewer (I believe the films of the Dziga-Vertov group were playing in Japan at this time, I don't doubt their influence on this.) The plot is simple, a cross dresser named Peter ("The Fool", from Kurosawa's RAN, who looks *very* feminine, his gender kept "secret" from the viewer for the first few minutes) is involved in the owner of the Shinjuku bar he works at, has a troubled past, and relives a homosexual version of the Oedipus story (maybe it's not so simple.) The late sixties produced *many* self-referential films from Japan's new wave (a few: Imamura's A Man Vanishes, Yoshida's Eros Plus Massacre, Shinoda's Double Suicide, Oshima's The Man Who Left His Will On Film, and Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, Hani's Inferno of First Love) and this is one of the most vibrant of the bunch. Roses, a symbol of homosexuality in Japan, dominate the landscape, and at some of the most serious and troublesome moments of the film there are interludes of interviews, or commentary, made by the filmmakers, actors, or apparently unconnected persons about the film you're watching. Where these would usually appear cheeky, they cut the heaviness of the film, and it works beautifully.
We're lucky to have this available, on a fantastic looking DVD (R2 Japan), with English subtitles, and I can't recommend searching it out highly enough.
EDIT: it is now available from the excellent DVD company in the UK Masters of Cinema and I can't praise that release enough.
We're lucky to have this available, on a fantastic looking DVD (R2 Japan), with English subtitles, and I can't recommend searching it out highly enough.
EDIT: it is now available from the excellent DVD company in the UK Masters of Cinema and I can't praise that release enough.