My review was written in March 1990 after a New Directors/New Films screening at MoMA.
Okinawan director Go Takamine unsuccessfully tackles the very difficult cinematic genre of allegorical fantasy in "Untama Giru", a painfully tedious and amateurish effort. Recently shown in the Berlin festival's Forum, pic has meager commercial potential.
As best represented by Jean Cocteau's classic "Orphee" and two great Latin American films of 20 years back, "Antonio das Mortes" and "El Topo", this folkloric film requires both technical skill and unfettered imagination, Takamine's ponderous, obscure and minimalist approach produces poor results.
Though story is set in the late '60s, it attempts to cover aspects of Okinawan history dating back to the Japanese invasion in 1609, U. S. occupation after WW II and return of the territory to Japan in 1972. There's more factual and emotional content on the subject in Hollywood's "The Teahouse of the August Moon", however.
Kaoru Kobayashi stolidly portrays Giru, a manual worker who becomes the legendary hero Untama Giru when he goes to haunted Untama Forest, has a magical object implanted in his forehead and leads battles against the U. S. military authorities.
Stupid subplots involve Giru's waif-like sister Jun Togawa, who is improbably a prostitute at the local brothel, coveted by evil U. S. high commissioner John Sayles (bland in a guest role). Emphasis is on fleeting but stimulating nude footage of a woman (credits are garbled, but actress is probably Chikako Aoyama) who turns out to be a werepig that transforms (off-camera) from pig to woman.
Special effects are used for levitating Diru and other fantasy characters, but the film never takes flight. Technical credits are pro but undermined by lax editing and poor pacing. Besides Sayles' on-screen participation, the actor-filmmaker's producer Maggie Renzi gets an untranslated thank-you credit at the end.
