Manji

Lurid. Hysterical. Gaping improbabilities and plot holes. I thought this might be a must-see because of the presence of Kyoko Kishida, long-faced, thick-lipped, huge-eyed woman in Suna no onna made the same year as Manji and the bizarre nurse in Tanin no kao made two years later. Turns out her other-worldliness was Teshigahara's invention. She's had a much varied 44 year career, mostly away from us here. See Manji for Teshigahara's woman and nurse.

The other woman, despite a long, somewhat distinguished career, looks and acts like an Elizabeth Taylor stand-in tumbled out of Tennessee Williams land. But surely this is director Masmura's invention.

(Manji, by the way, is the Buddhist cross on the DVD box.)

By 1964 standards, this film really doesn't mess around, nor does it take any prisoners. It's fairly blatant about the story centering on two women who fall in love, but also don't entirely cut their husbands/male partners out of their lives, which leads to complications and some drastic things that feel a little extreme, but I'd chalk it up to Japan being a different culture at a different time... or just the film trying to make a point, and not necessarily be a reflection of how this situation would play out in real life. Have to accept it's one or the other; I think you just have to admit defeat, in a way, by saying you don't always know for sure when it comes to foreign films.

The dark and emotionally intense places Manji goes also make it feel a bit melodramatic, but again, I can't assume. And even then, if it is melodrama, I think it's mostly well-done melodrama; that kind of thing isn't automatically bad. Maybe there's some repetition and characters saying things in such a blatant way that can feel forced, but it could be partly intended. Perhaps it's wrong to assume it either is or isn't clunky dialogue. The truth could be somewhere in between.

Waffling here. It's not well-paced, but the film is well-acted and I admire how it handled such a story 60 years ago. If some of the melodrama was intended, then I think the writing was acceptably blunt and the performances were effectively heightened. The grimmer parts of the story don't quite devastate the way I thought they would, but that might be owing to the film's structure, with one character narrating a series of events from her perspective. It creates some intrigue, but also some sense of inevitability; a bit of a double-edged sword. And then it also ends pretty suddenly.

But I have to keep coming back to it being good for its time. I wasn't expecting this film to take the approach it did, and I imagine it would've caused at least some controversy in Japan at the time.

You know what ground you're treading with Manji from the get go. From the swastika (the titular Manji) that announces the film's title, there's nothing understated about it. The story of lesbian love between the middle-class wife of a lawyer and a strikingly gorgeous model who poses for painters at the centre of Manji is not of the suggestive 'glances and gestures' variety, this is not a drama on homosexual love repressed by a rigid Japanese society, rather a soaring melodrama masquerading a seemy underbelly of lies and morbid obsession.

It's true that the movie requires on the part of the viewer a few jumps in logic. It asks him to accept that two complete strangers become so obsessed with each other in a matter of days. But this is a two hour movie neatly crammed in 90 minutes so the narrative economy is not wasted. Out of the sweet, alluring love affair between the two women director Yasuzo Masumura twists a progressively more nightmarish, demented scenario, a convoluted story of fatal obsession, the addiction to a perverse love, the need to control and be controlled and how quick humans are to elevate other humans to a pedestal, eager to worship and die for them.

If the movie seems to be twisting and writhing under the burden of its own narrative weight, with small alliances, blood oaths, rifts and reconciliations and all manner of cajoling and petty chicanery taking place between the four major participants (the two women, the husband of one and fiancé of the second) as each tries to win the object of his desire or fend someone else from doing so, stick with it. Masumura has paced the film and shaped his story so expertly that, by the one hour mark, this tale of domestic treachery has spiralled out of control into full blown paranoia, a bizarre and creepy psychological horror film of sorts that happens so naturally and feels so perfectly plausible at that point as to excuse the more overwrought tendencies that preceed it.

The movie reflects that kind of claustrophobic obsession on every level. Limited cast, tight shots, static camera, close grouping of the actors in the frame, no exterior shots, monotonous piano score. Any way you see it, this is a minor aesthetic triumph for Masumura. Strongly recommended.

The cinematography, the actors, the symbols. Everything is perfectly placed to create a tale of lust, obsession, and betrayal. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked this movie. But toward the middle, the more the plot spun into what seemed like a million different twists I hadn't seen coming, the more and more I trusted this film knew what it was doing. I won't give anything away. But fans of Junji Ito's Tomie would approve of this one. //Little light on the gore though. XD

Wonderful film based on the novel "Quicksand" by Juinichiro Tanizaki and directed by the great Japanese director Yasuzô Masumura, the film tells the story of a married woman who begins a sick and obsessive love relationship with a beautiful and ruthless young girl (played by a marvelous Ayako Wakao), that insane relationship will lead to a tragic ending ...

The movie tells a story about passion, love and betrayal, displaying tons of sensuality stylishly without need of being explicit...

The are too many other versions of this movie made years later but I highly doubt that they can come any closer to this piece of art...

MASTERPIECE