Another aesthetic triumph of obsession from the accomplished director of "Blind Beast" and "The Razor 2: The Snare" -- to name only two of his 60+ films.
It is a tale of love gone mad, a visually sumptuous melodrama told in flashback by Kyoko Kashida, who plays a bored, cashed-up wife (Sonoko) who falls hard for the beautiful, manipulative, engaged Mitsuko (Ayako Wakao). Her fanatical love and jealousy create massive fissures in her marriage, even triggering unpredictable, outrageous changes in her husband Eijiro (Yasuke Kawazu).
The soap opera-like machinations of what, for a time, is a quadrangle of love and possession, are fascinating to witness thanks to the solid, audacious screenplay from writer Kaneto Shindo, the director and writer of the classic "Onibaba".
Some visual passages of the film -- bodies shot through rippling fabric, shadows dancing on flesh, restrained, delicate love scenes of steamy eroticism, the use of an elegant score -- made me think that the film probably influenced the look and tone of Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's "In The Mood For Love".
The love of "Manji" is a doomed, impossible ideal that can not exist in harmony with anything else. Director Masumura adheres strictly to this viewpoint until the final, tragic revelation.
It is a tale of love gone mad, a visually sumptuous melodrama told in flashback by Kyoko Kashida, who plays a bored, cashed-up wife (Sonoko) who falls hard for the beautiful, manipulative, engaged Mitsuko (Ayako Wakao). Her fanatical love and jealousy create massive fissures in her marriage, even triggering unpredictable, outrageous changes in her husband Eijiro (Yasuke Kawazu).
The soap opera-like machinations of what, for a time, is a quadrangle of love and possession, are fascinating to witness thanks to the solid, audacious screenplay from writer Kaneto Shindo, the director and writer of the classic "Onibaba".
Some visual passages of the film -- bodies shot through rippling fabric, shadows dancing on flesh, restrained, delicate love scenes of steamy eroticism, the use of an elegant score -- made me think that the film probably influenced the look and tone of Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's "In The Mood For Love".
The love of "Manji" is a doomed, impossible ideal that can not exist in harmony with anything else. Director Masumura adheres strictly to this viewpoint until the final, tragic revelation.