Hana chirinu

Described by Noel Burch as "one of the most remarkable community portraits ever filmed", this powerful debut feature made with glacial but passionate elegance by a director still almost unknown in the West would certainly fail the Bechtel Test - despite having an all-female cast - since men are the film's defining absence; a rumbling offscreen presence like the gunfire heard in the closing sequence which combines expressive use both of the camera and the soundtrack.

It's the time of the Civil War that surrounded the Meiji reestablishment of the Emperor's power. We don't see any of the men being killed. Instead, the entire movie takes place in a Kyoto geisha house. There are no customers. Troops in the street keep the customers away. The women discuss the events and talk about fleeing for safety.

It's certainly a different view of the chaos of civil war. There are no heroics, no sign of anything except the lack of business, and occasional noises of battle. In fact, there are no men seen, although a few can be heard offscreen. Besides worrying about business, the women talk about men constantly: their customers, their lovers, their relatives, the refugees and soldiers camped just out of town.

Because of its limited setting, director Tamizo Ishida and cameraman Harumi Machii keep this visually interesting by their geat variety of camera angles. In more than 300 set-ups, I didn't see one repeated placement.