Rokugatsu no hebi

Snake of June, A (2002)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A rather bizarre Japanese film from director Shinya Tsukamoto. A woman is photographed masturbating by a deranged stalker and soon he makes her go on a sexual voyage that includes humiliating herself. The stalker does this so that the woman will do what she wants instead of being "held down" by her boring husband. This is the first film I've seen from this director and while I loved his technique I can't really say I enjoyed the story being told. The first forty minutes are so are full of some nice, tense moments but when the side story with the husband came into play I really lost all interest in the story. The blue-tinted color of the film was very nice and the director does get some good performance but he simply lost me half way through.

In Tokyo, Rinko Tatsumi (Asuka Kurosawa) is a married woman that works in the County Mental Help Center helping needy people. Her husband Shigehiko (Yuji Koutari) is an old man obsessed with cleaning and they have a quite inexistent sexual life, sleeping in separate bed. Out of the blue, Rinko receives an envelope with erotic pictures she took once in the past while modeling and a cellular. She receives a phone call and the man blackmails her, promising to give the negatives to her if she follows his instructions. She is forced to wear miniskirt without panties; to buy a vibrator and use it, walking and exposing to costumers of a department store. The man delivers her photos and tells that he is Iguchi (Shinya Tsukamoto), who is dying of stomach cancer that was saved by her advice; in return he asks her to go to her doctor. Rinko realizes that she has breast cancer and needs to remove one breast. When she tells Shigehiko, he gives a cold reception to the idea. Then the blackmailer contacts Shigehiko, forcing him to follow his instructions.

"Rokugatsu no Hebi", a.k.a. "A Snake of June", is a surrealistic erotic movie that follows the style of David Lynch, with bizarre sequences and characters. This is the first work of the director Shinya Tsukamoto that I have watched and this is the type of "love or hate" cult-movie. The stylish cinematography uses blue filter in the rainy season of Tokyo, giving the mood of sadness and nightmarish atmosphere to the weird story. Asuka Kurosawa is absolutely sexy breathing eroticism in the sequences that she follows the instructions of the blackmailer. There are many metaphoric scenes without explanation, but I believe that the major idea of the story is that life is to be lived in its plenitude since we may die on the next minute of our existence. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

This reminds me of my discovery with Tetsuo, ten years ago, of a cinema out there. Tetsuo for me at the time was like listening for the first time to bands like Throbbing Gristle or SPK. The term 'industrial' wasn't just a commercial label, it communicated something fundamental of the fabric it was made of, not of style but of the sound itself (in Tetsuo's case, the image). It was enough to simply experience it, interpretations seemed superfluous.

Snake of June is a similar experience for the body, in the sense that the ideas explored pale in comparison to the exploration itself. Whatever it's a portrait of, of sexual or personal liberation from the self, it's the portrait that matters to me.

The grimy aesthetic pulsing with grain and noise, the fluid camera exploring dark recesses of an urban dystopia of constant downpour, the sudden bursts of fetishized sex, all these orient and provide contrast and context to what is explored. It's not enough to see these personal demons overcomed by the female protagonist, the boundaries of mundane existence broken apart, it counts to experience how they reflect.

A view of the mind is permitted here through a camera obscura, dancing on the walls of the mind we see demented projections. The emerging view is not clear, but like the best of surreal cinema, kaleidoskopic. We may piece something together of the image we see, but that's hardly the point for me. I point a kaleidoskope to something to experience the phantasmagoria of the fracture, Snake of June works likewise. The portrait we get is not a lifelike depiction, but an expressionist one.

This may be linked to horror cinema due to Tsukamoto's credentials, but it's really New Wave in the best tradition of directors like Susumu Hani and Toshio Matsumoto.

If TETSUO was about hating your body, SNAKE OF JUNE is about embracing it. Fans of the former will know what to expect in terms of style: black-and-white, wild photography, bizarre imagery etc. What they won't expect is the relatively accessible and easy-to-follow storyline in the first half, as a woman discovers her own desires through the promptings of a blackmailer. About half-way through the focus is switched to her husband, and here we revert to total obscurity, in the TETSUO and TETSUO 2 mould. Tsukamoto buffs will find it all very interesting, others will be left baffled.

I don't feel quite qualified to comment on this (not that this has stopped me before) as its my first Shinya Tsukamoto movie to see - but I can see immediately why so many people are fascinated by his movies. This doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, and like so many movies of the 'I'm far too talented to be literal' genre of film-making, there are parts that just leave you scratching your head (or my head, as the case may be). But what is undeniable is that this movie is packed with riveting sequences and shows immense talent. This is one of those rare moves that demands a second viewing to delve beneath the layers. It starts out as a slightly creepy thriller and then goes on a variety of tangents, some of which seem logical, most do not. It seems to be about the need not to suppress our deeper needs (a pretty common theme in Japanese film making), but its 'subject' is much less important than the style - and what style there is here. The blue tinted B&W photography is stunning, with fantastic editing and very dedicated acting. Well worth catching, but not when your granny is around.....