Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 35/52 | Kaidan Films
1895 — A village in Japan
A rickshaw runner named Gisaburo returns home from a day’s work. Gisaburo passes Toyoji on the way, seemingly coming from Gisaburo’s house. Once home, his wife, Seki, pours him some shōchū while their toddler son, Ishichi, sits on his lap. She looks after him like a maid, all while assuring him that Toyoji has been coming by but is not interested in her. While Gidsburo goes to work, Toyoji comes around, often with some treat. Gisaburo is content to go home, get drunk, and get rubbed down.
One day, Toyoji comes by and finds Seki asleep, Ishichi in her arms, and her breast partially out from breastfeeding. He comes around to give her a back massage, but quickly gropes her breast against her wishes. Ishichi cries as Toyoji drags her into the back room and SAs her by giving her oral sex. The next day, he SAs her again, and she relents to intercourse. While lying together after coitus, Toyoji confesses that he is intensely jealous of Gisaburo.
Some time passes, and the rainy season comes. On a rainy day, Toyoji comes by to find Gisaburo at home, along with their older daughter, Shin. Toyoji leaves and catches Seki leaving her sick aunt’s. He brings her to his place, where he performs consensual oral. While down there, he tells her repeatedly to shave it. So, she lets Toyoji shave her. Then, while they sit by the fire, Toyoji insists they must kill Gisaburo. He convinces her that, now that she’s shaven, she has no other choice.
The film follows their conspiracy and the years that follow.
The wind blows through the trees, sending withered red leaves to the ground, and soon the forest floor is covered. Peasants rake up the dead leaves to use as fuel for their fires. Such is the wisdom of the poor.
Following the erotic horror of In the Realm of the Senses, I was curious to see where Ōshima would take his filmmaking. While this film is an erotic thriller of sorts, it skews much closer to the structure of a classic kaidan. The visual storytelling starts relatively straightforward, but shifts as the movie progresses. Each act seems to have its own visual language, with the camera descending lower and lower to the ground.
It turns out that In the Realm of the Senses’s hardcore sex was an insistence of his French producer, Anatole Dauman. Not that Ōshima was opposed to evading Japanese censorship, as that had been a recurring problem in his career. Dauman agreed to finance three of Ōshima’s films.
But when this one came out without hardcore sex, Dauman ended the agreement. Ōshima was uninterested in repeating himself and found a story that contrasted more than mirrored his work in Senses. After this film, it would be five years before he made his next film.
Gisaburo is content to get drunk and let Seki live a miserable life. He makes his and Seki’s older daughter, Shin, work as a nanny despite her desire to go to school and “have a good life.” He laughs as he remembers Seki also wanted a good life, and look at her now.
Toyoji is young and selfish, willing to connive for what he wants without thinking through the consequences. It’s clear he’s killed while in the army, and he no longer finds it difficult. Seki is someone he finds easy to manipulate, in that Senso kind of way.
Seki is the closest character to a victim of this story (outside of their: a servant to her husband and a victim to her would-be lover. When the concept of killing her husband comes up, her biggest concern is getting caught.
There are no heroes in this story — even the inspector who comes by trying to solve the case is a moron with cartoonishly hairbrained schemes. The young master has some sense of morality, but is easily silenced. Denzo, Toyoji’s developmentally disabled brother, is the only one who seems to live an unfettered life.
Madam, this is an age of civilization and enlightenment.
It’s wild to read reviews that think this movie is erotic or romantic, or that it intends to be in any way. The sex is joyless, and the nudity is only in moments of desperation and sadness. By focusing on lower-class characters rather than the classic kaidan, the film subverts the genre while still paying homage to some of its images.
— What are you laughing about?
— Just thinking about the past.
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criterion-channelcriterionasiancinemachallenge2023asiancc2023asiancc2023week35j-horrorkaidan