Perhaps the last place you'd expect to find unrepentant nihilism mixed with angst-y nouvelle vague-ism is in a Japanese pinku soft-core movie but director Koji Wakamatsu delivers just that with The Woman Who Wanted to Die. The ritual suicide of poet rebel Yukio Mishima sets off the unsettled Ryoko who is tired of life so she dumps her equally dour boyfriend after they failed to complete their suicide pact and immediately marries a man with the same problem with his old girlfriend. Rather conveniently all four meet up at the mountain inn where the old girlfriend set up shop after failing to die from the injuries from their failed attempt.
Wakamatsu started out doing standard creepy pinku porn but developed a revolutionary zeal that he adapted into his output giving them a degree of sophistication that was definitely out of place and totally unexpected in that particular genre. There is a certain - I hate to use the word but - artistic element here, he mixes color footage with standard black and white imagery that shows he was well aware of what was going in France and other countries that were experimenting with non-traditional cinematic techniques. An interesting hour although the mind does wander and it does feel padded even at that.
