Manji

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.

'Manji' is a film worth seeing. Written by Kaneto Shindô (of 'Onibaba' fame) and based on a novel by Tanizaki (of 'Some Prefer Nettles' fame), the story chronicles the decent/ascent of the unhappily married woman, Sonoko, into an obsessive/liberating relationship with another woman, Mitsuko, associated throughout the film with the goddess of mercy. While all of the main characters' emotions run high, placing 'Manji' firmly in the genre of melodrama, the emotional intensity is always tempered with an element of sly humor. Both Sonoko and Mitsuko have complex motivations, and each is keenly aware of the machinations of the other, ensuring that the story is about passion, weakness, and love, and not about unexamined emotions and victimization.

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

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.)

What do you get when you combine early-60's hairdo's and makeup, histrionic Japanese love triangles and forbidden lesbian passion? In this case, a wonderfully bonkers movie that deserves a larger cult audience.

Any movie that features blood oaths, suicide pacts, taboo love affairs and a wife screaming "You don't love me enough! I need more love!" is one I'll want to see again and again. (Too bad it's so hard to come by in the U.S. -- the film screened recently at the American Cinematheque and Outfest in L.A., and at the San Francisco Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, but apparently only after much paperwork with Japan. Still, if you actually get a chance to see it, DO NOT MISS IT!