Pale Flower

Just for the young Mariko Kaga aged 21, Pale Flower is a must. She's playing a very complex character, her lovely face is half juvenile, half wild and sexy. She teams with a handsome yakusa much older than her, the cool Ryo Ikebe, very quiet and well-dressed. Eveything is perfect in this slow paced and atmospheric film noir, black and white cinematography, music, and a special mention to editing with so many spying glances.

Upon his release from prison for killing a rival mobster, Muraki strolls the streets of Tokyo and muses that nothing has changed in three years and that people are little more than half dead stupid animals whose lives are meaningless. In voice-over he asks "What was so wrong with killing one of them?" While he was away the two Tokyo gangs have reached a truce in order to eliminate a third gang from Osaka. Muraki is unsure of his role in the new alliance and places little value in the yakuza (gangster) code. He is a lone wolf who, while a dependable team player, is a risk taker who takes action on his own and finds consolation from his weary existence in the Tokyo nights and its' gambling dens.

Saeko is a well dressed, beautiful young woman with lots of cash and, like Muraki, is a creature of the night. They meet at a card game where Saeko recklessly wagers, loses and wants more. A woman in such a place is an oddity and all the players are fascinated by her, including Muraki. When she asks Muraki if he knows of a game where the stakes are higher he knows that he has found what he was looking for. The two are immediately drawn to one another and their fates are sealed. Together they combat the boredom of life with high stakes gambling, high speed joy rides (she drives) and other thrills that come with living on the edge. They agree that whatever they do, they can forgive themselves. "I have no use for the dawn. I adore these evil nights," says Saeko. A truer noir couple there never was. But when Saeko becomes drawn to another mid level yakuza – the half-Chinese junkie Yoh - Muraki feels a sense of loss. To win her back he asks Saeko if she wants to watch him as he assassinates the head of the Osaka syndicate. She cannot say no and he knows it.

While it is not a typical yakuza film as there is little bloodshed and killing, it is a gritty portrait of yakuza life: gambling dens, night clubs, racetracks and doing things they have to do and feeling good about it. It is their life and it is unquestioned. It is this that the film is really about: fate and the impending doom that hangs over all of the characters. It reflects the end of the old Japanese tradition of honor and obedience to a patriarchal system that was in disarray after their defeat in WWII and the occupation that followed. The American film noir existentialism and stunning expressionist photography in monochrome Cinemascope create a film experience that is the equal of anything that came out of Europe and the U.S. Even the card game scenes, a game called hana fuda with a deck that has twelve suits all named after flowers, have an intensity that is very noir. There is also a bizarre dream sequence that adds to the stylized strangeness of the film as does the avant garde soundtrack by Toru Takemitsu. The strange and confusing percussion and brass of Takemitsu's score somehow seems in perfect sync with what we are seeing on the screen. This is a complete film experience.

Whereas "Blue Velvet" is about the lengths that people go to for sexual gratification, "Pale Flower" is about that lengths that people go to for a few "kicks," kind of like a Japanese gangster adaptation of Kerouac's "On the Road."

Upon attempting to release "Pale Flower," the studio's censor banned the film, and this fact says quite a bit about the temperature of Post-War Japan's pop culture, and the target audience of this film. While the director claims the film is about Japan's uncertain stance in the Cold War, it may be more accurate to say that the film is about Shinoda's Nihilistic stance towards Japan's relationship to the world's superpowers.

And while nihilism describes Shinoda, existentialism may better describe Muraki and Saeko. Gambling, animalistic sex, drugs, all in an effort to just feel something, anything, and to get lost in the moments those emotions provide. Some would say that the gambling scenes are too long and do little to advance the plot, but this movie's script is made up mostly of unspoken dialogue and it is during the gambling scenes that the main characters are developed.

While I loved 95 percent of this film's moody and atmospheric lighting, at times it's so dark you can't tell what's going on. Still, the shots are well constructed, the actors well directed, and their performances subtle yet effective. Dig the sexual tension that is constantly building between Muraki and Saeko, and how this tension is dealt with. Somehow I felt myself sympathizing with this killer in a very real way, and this says something about Shinoda's and "Pale Flowers" success.

Yakuza, Muraki is released from prison after three years for stabbing and killing a member of a rival gang. He is shocked to find out that his bosses have since amalgamated with the rival gang to fight off the advances of another gang from Osaka which is muscling in on their patch. Muraki is addicted to gambling and soon finds himself back in illegal gambling dens, where he meets with the alluring and seemingly very rich Saeko, a young woman who is addicted to living fast and seeking new thrills to keep her entertained. Through his contacts he introduces her to bigger games where the crime bosses play for much bigger stakes. Shinoda was part of the "New Wave" of Japanese film-makers that were frowned upon in many circles, not least by the Shochiko studio, generally a family orientated studio made famous by Ozu. To make matters worse the author Masaru Baba was less than impressed by the directors visual flair, (a flair that has been compared to that of Jean Pierre Melville and the French New Wave). He believed the visuals clouded his story, as a result the film was banned in Japan due to its over elaborations on illegal gambling. This quickly led Shinoda to the opinion that making films independently was the only way to go in the future, as even Tôru Takemitsu's superb score was frowned upon in Japan. Shinoda's visuals are exceptional and evoke memories of Noir Classics of the past, with all the staples catered for, rain drenched neon lit streets, chiaroscuro lighting, jaunty camera angles, our hero, cigarette on his lip wandering through the night with his lady of dubious past and intentions. As Muraki's affections grow for his new found platonic playmate, it would also seem to mirror the demise of his affections for all things Yakuza, he is a world weary man, an intelligent man, certainly more so than anyone in his own circles, he realises his own merits and deficiencies and comes to the conclusion he could have done better with life. Even Muraki's long time girlfriend who loves him dearly, wants to move on, Muraki is powerless to hold on to her as his infatuation grows, to the point where he is having lucid nightmares concerning Saeko. Pale Flower is not all doom and gloom though, there are respites of wryly dark humour, usually found in the mundane day to day workings of the Yakuza. Pale Flower is an astonishingly rich and layered character study that will keep even those with an aversion to subtitles entertained.

Ryo Ikebe is perfect as the super-cool, sharply dressed ex-con who willingly seals his own fate despite his obvious intelligence and powers of perception. His body language is crisp and economical and his life experience is etched into his face. He is the Japanese doppleganger of the under-appreciated (except by Tarrantino) American actor Robert Forster. This is actually worthy of a remake starring Forster but I heavily doubt if any filmmaker can recreate the style and panache that Mr. Shinoda injected into every shot of the astonishing cinematography. In an interview on the DVD extra, he says that nihilism was his main theme but it's a quiet, shadow-covered nihilism, not explosive and bombastic. There are very few scenes of violence; action is not the show here. The heart of the film is the undefinable relationship between the adrenaline-loving rich girl and the yakuza hit man. Shinoda likens his position in life as the embodiment of post-war Japan caught between the Soviet Union and the USA. The climactic hit is brilliantly choreographed, shot and scored. Certain elements of Pale Flower evoked memories of The Face of Another, a totally different type of film that also explored the existential subjects of solitude, isolation and alienation.