Fleur pâle

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.

There was never a moment in the first two thirds (or three quarters, whatever the stretch of time) where I had any dislike for Pale Flower, far from it, I was entranced and involved in this world of back-room gambling parlors in Japan where men put down money they know more than likely they'll lose. But there was a moment at that point I mention where I fell in love with the film: our resident anti-hero Muraki (an incredible-if-only-for-his-presence Ryo Ikebe) is having a dream, only it's a fever dream, or a nightmare, or one of those, involving a girl, Saeko (the oddly pretty Mariko Kaga) who he is infatuated with (but doesn't really love exactly, it's hard to point what it is) and a strange half-Chinese drug-peddler, Yoh (a man who doesn't have a line in the whole film, far as I can tell, aside from possibly some creepy-stalking singing, which I'll get to later). The way the director Masahiro Shinoda has Muraki framed is out of the classic nightmare-scenarios - stuck in slow-motion, dark corridors and shadows where he peers in on the characters that stick in his mind in an inverse tint, and he can't take it.

I went back and watched just that scene twice, just to see how Shinoda framed those shots, where he and his DP chose to pull back with the camera. Throughout the film he and his cameraman have an intelligence to their noirish drama, even in the gambling scenes (which, frankly, I still don't totally understand, though this shouldn't be an issue for Japanese audiences so I let it slide), and it culminates with this dream scene. What made it stand out was that the filmmakers tried to not let us in TOO much into this Muraki, and hey, why not? He's an ex-con with three years in the pen for a murder that he is not sure why he did - or rather, he says it was a simple "him or me" survival thing, and doesn't dwell on it much - and drifts from one place to the next. Saeko does give him some sort of lift or interest in the game of gambling they go for, even as Saeko isn't good at it and has a kind of frightening need to have a RUSH for excitement. When they start to drive past 100 (or SHE does I should note) with another car in the middle of the night, there's little explanation, and less so for why she finds this hysterically funny when they're done.

But this dream does give us a small window into this man's twisted but empathetic soul. He does want things, or has things he doesn't want, which is this girl he has some care for to not end up with a man who, at one point, stalks him down an empty street at night as if a sinister cat (or a young Harry Lime) was prowling the streets. The plot, as much as it is in the film, doesn't fully kick into gear until the third act anyway as the truce between Yakuza gangs is split by a murder that needs avenging, which, as a sort of self-imposed fate by Muraki would have it, goes where you think it will. The real focus and power and entertainment in Pale Flower is how Shinoda looks at these characters, the rough side that Muraki has just embedded in him, and what humanity (if any) is left in him. This is hard-boiled, existential noir with some experimental beats; it doesn't go quite as far as Branded to Kill, for example, but coming a few years before it is groundbreaking in its small ways.

It feels hyper-realistic in an exciting way: a sudden attack at a bowling alley is shocking for how it just seems to be part of the way of things at a bowling alley with a high-profile yakuza like Muraki (more to do with how its shot, that it's one long shot this happens in before the angle finally changes as the assassin is taken away - this too has a twist with the young upstart looking up to Muraki, but this is a supporting story). This is about a man who resides in the shadows since its what he knows best, and is not a total shut-out from his bosses, but is so cold as to seem to more 'normal' gangsters as impenetrable. Indeed it speaks to what Shinoda was going for that he cast Ikebe, who wasn't keen on learning a ton of lines, for his walk(!) Add to that a helluva dame in Saeko with a 'big' performance by Kaga mostly in her eyes, and the strange not-quite-but-yes adversary of Fujiki's Yoh, and you got a gritty noir that has the daring to not just be a B-thriller. Look no further than the climax, which aspires to operatic heights long before HK thriller went for all that jazz, and you get the idea.

To put it another way, this is like what I'd imagine, if he saw it, one of a handful of films the author Donald Westlake would be jealous he didn't get to write.

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.

If you like your film noir lean and atmospheric, this is probably for you. It also has elements of yakuza, sun tribe, and existentialism, and so seems to blend genres, but at the same time, it's completely focused. The cinematography is wonderful - the scenes at night driving, the stares from across the gambling table, and narrow streets all come to mind - and the audio is too, with a great mix of loud cacophony and scenes so quiet you could hear a pin drop. A murder to the sound of an opera aria is pretty cool, and seems like it must have influenced other directors. The film also benefits from a magnetic couple of actors in the lead roles, Ryo Ikebe and Mariko Kaga. His detached persona fits a remorseless killer perfectly, just as her enigmatic look fits her character's recklessness.

What's haunting about the film is that both characters are so bored with life that they turn dispassionately to crime and gambling. At the outset of the film he's just gotten out of jail for killing a rival gang member, and while looking at people in crowded Tokyo, says "What are they living for? Their faces are lifeless, dead. They're desperately pretending to be alive." As for the murder he committed, "slaughtering one of these dumb beasts," as he puts it, he says "It's a strange feeling. Somebody died, but nothing has changed." As for her character, named Saeko (a homonym for Psycho, surely not accidentally) she needs to raise the stakes on her obsessive gambling to feel anything, dabbles in drugs for the same reason, and says in a wonderful moment "I wish the sun would never rise. I love these wicked nights." The two are so striking and cool, and yet it's as if they're nearly dead within, empty and in need of something positive to live for. Weirdly, though the two seem attracted to each other, when they end up in bed together while hiding during a police raid, they choose to talk about the flower card game rather than make love.

There is something about these sentiments in a post-war Japan still searching for itself, and a director like Masahiro Shinoda trying to usher in the New Wave, that's powerful. It may rate even higher with a film connoisseurs for just how clean it is, but it left me wishing there had been a little more plot development. Still a very good film though, and one that may be better on a second watch.

Film devotees have long realized that the "new wave" art cinema of Japan in the 60's was as innovative and profound as the revolutionary American and European product of the era. What is now becoming clear to fans in the West inured to Godzilla and Starman is that the little-seen Japanese genre pictures of the time were in many cases just as startling and artistic. "Pale Flower" is a case in point. It has the breathtaking luminous-white on inky-black lighting, the fragmented framing, and massive potential energy threatening to explode from the edges of the screen that so characterize the contemporaneous films of Seijun Suzuki (of "Branded to Kill" fame). But instead of that director's post-modern excesses, this film takes a somber, meditative tack, not unlike Beat Takeshi's recent "Sonatine", presenting a carefully-wrought, moody character study amid the expected thrills. The musical score, when it surfaces, is suitably avant-garde, and the frame is filled with rich detail and well-defined characters, like the crime boss obsessed with his dental health. A must-see for the adventurous film buff.