Yuke yuke nidome no shojo

GO, GO, SECOND-TIME VIRGIN! (1969): First things first - quite possibly the best name for a movie ever! A strangely jaunty, optimistic sounding title for such a grim and nihilistic movie though.

"If you tell me why you want to die, then I'll kill you"

"Really?" "Yes?" "It's because I'm so hopelessly unhappy in this life"

(Bit of a rough quote there I'm afraid). GGSTV! opens with a 17 year old girl being dragged to a rooftop and raped by a gang of thugs, whilst a boy of a similar age watches on expressionless. The sun rises the next day to find boy and girl still in the same positions, sat in silence until the girl rises and wishes him "Good morning". Awkward conversation arises, and the girl reveals that this is the second time she's been raped. She is surprised to find that she has bled this time too (hence the title, which is actually a line from a song she sings to herself). The conversation progresses little better when she asks the boy to kill him. Throughout the course of the day, the boy lets her into his own life a little, which we find to be at least as f***ed up as hers. I don't know what it is about the Japanese, but they seem to have a knack of producing the strangest and most disturbed movies in the world. Takashi Miike might be shocking audiences and provoking walk outs now, but 32 years ago Koji Wakamatsu was producing movies that were at least as dysfunctional and disturbing. Whilst the west was having flower power and free love, Japan appears to have had quite a different approach to the hippy movement (though this may not be an entirely representative sample!). If GGSTV! were to be made now, it could only be a student film, and it would be largely criticised for its naivety, probably accused of being self-indulgent. And for having some truly awful acting. But movies in general were different in 1969, and GGSTV! was certainly a pioneering film and seemingly quite sincere in its bleak world view. It feels in many ways more 'film' like than most movies today... the cinematography is all very photographic, and the way the interesting soundtrack is blended with the movie - definitely 'cinema as art'. I'm not going to suggest it's a great movie, but it is fascinating and provocative, and deeply bleak and depressing, so that might appeal to some .

Ive seen alot of films from Japan and other countries. But this has got to be one of the most bizare,yet interesting films that has come out of japan in recent years. Its like a teen angst film gone awry. unlike American teen angst films were you just have a bunch of dialog and crying this one has action and visual imagery that follows the characters though out the whole film the combination of both color and black and white film is a rare treat indeed.

Given that we are dealing with a no budget production shot in a couple of days on top of a roof, the result is astonishing. Koji Wakamatsu has a visual style that outdoes any avantgarde director/photographer with a bigger name. In beautifully shot black and white with some gory color sequences this film takes you on a compelling, nihilistic trip through the claustrophobic existence of two teenagers living on the edge of society. The extreme violence is sometimes lightened by unexpected moments of haunting, morbid poetry. Always true to the characters he has created, Wakamatsu finds beauty where others would only seek for sleaze. This underground masterpiece transcends its humble beginnings and can easily stand comparison with the works of Nagisha Oshima and Seijun Suzuki.

Not an easy and an art movie, Koji Wakamatsu's „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' won't let you without a second see, because it's just amazing. But that's not all. There is a natural tendency of considering this movie as a far-eastern one and especially as a '60's -'70's one. More than that (can you imagine) „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' is a strange and beautiful combination Bunuel-Resnais-Antonioni in a Japanese manner. It is true that the movie is violent, really violent, but physical violence is a indispensable element in „Go-Go Second Time Virgin', especially when the same violence is not being followed for any single moment by Wakamatsu. The TITLE signifies purity, and in the beginning, a 17 years old girl is gang raped on a roof, while a boy is watching without participating. The boy remains there, right next to the raped girl till the morning, 8th of August, a warm and sunny one. The girl gets up and, even though she wasn't a virgin, she still bleeded after the rape. It was the second time she was raped, first time it happened on a beach, and from B/W, the image is now cyan. She bleeded for the second time, because she didn't lose her innocence, and directly comes the title, „Go-Go Second Time Virgin'. For the same reason the movie is „build' on and around a ROOF, with many WHITE SHEETS in the 8th of August morning scene. The girl is sad and she wants to die, and the boy, an anonymous poet, pretends that he does not understand why. We go down the roof in a flat where the image turns for the last time from B/W (not a coincidence) into colour, this time, and there is a murder scene with four bodies and a lot of blood. The victims have sexually molested the boy and he killed them for being „pigs' and that's how ABUSE is introduced. From this moment 'till the end, the movie turns into a not losing purity dilemma, and the climax is the night i'm-gonna-kill-you-dance, all WHITE SHEETS are gone and a misty morning on the 9th of August. As for the set, the image and the shot, Tarkovsky's and Kieslowskyi's fans would be delighted seeing „Go-Go Second Time Virgin' a '65 minutes everyday Masterpiece about trying, keeping and fighting for your own purity. The most violent non-violent film I've ever seen, simply BEAUTIFUL (8/10).

Go, Go, Second Time Virgin is disturbing and affecting only if one takes it as a dream, or as it subsumed me in the uncomfortable and repetition of a nightmare. You don't follow this story in terms of realism, especially in terms of human behavior, and yet I don't look at these figures on the screen, Poppo (Kozakura) and Tsukio (Akiyama), like they're some unrecognizable beings or aliens from another planet. They're traumatized figures from multiple rapes (one of which the opening of the scene, letting the audience know precisely what this is) and, as we come to find out, a vengeance-soaked mild-mannered killer (ain't they the peachy keen folks), and their bond after Tsukio stands by and sees Poppo raped and doesn't do anything is to talk about how much they want to die.

So, maybe this is also the dream or nightmare of unending and the blackest kind of despair. But it is also shot in this sort of detached Godardian French New Wave approach where things are on such a surreal pace and tone that it feels like every rule is broken in filmmaking so that we can see what makes the traumatized and criminals of the world tick. When these two talk with one another it is all of a randomized piece, like all these violent and bloodied forms make sense even as nothing makes sense.

In a deeper sense, and I may just be spitballing here, the director is looking to portray how minds become wholly discombobulated after traumatic events (as perpetrated or perpetrator), how the only way to communicate and be connected is through a desire for an end to it all (and, eventually, there's unbridled joy in the mania of violence). This apparently ranked in the top 100 list of the New Republic's best Political films ever made some years back, and I can see why that would rank in there. In the sense that is is a harrowing, bitter document of politics, it js about how a destructive force like rapists and a vengeful killer can't and wont stop. And just because one takes it as a jazz-scored chiaroscuro nightmare doesn't make it feel less palpable.

Again, light stuff. I dont think this is something you would even come to unless you know what to expect, but what makes the film so surprising is that the director Wakamatsu, working in the form of Exploitation (and this was released as a "Pink" film or what was close to a Dirty Movie in Japan in those days) uses the wide-screen frame fully and boldly, and the fact that he shot this in four days and got all those shots in the rain is radical by itself. In other words, what at least partially redeems this as something other than just misery porn are things like the sudden song, and how he cast the film and directs Kozakura and especially Akiyama (who strikes me as one of the most chilling Killers in post modern cinema because of his mild demeanor).

Not something I can exactly see myself watching again in a while (one of those excellently made, artistically defiant works), but it is one I'm glad I took a chance on from the Japan section at Kim's.