Fiore secco

Most of the Asian gangster movies I have seen, promote the brotherhood and the comradery between members, like Young and Dangerous, or have denounced gangster activity, showing if as degrading and evil. This movie does neither. It instead shows how gangster life has both good and bad; however in the end proves to be a pointless cause. The main character, is just released from jail, and immediately reunites with his own yakuza. His life is changed when he meets Saeko, a young woman who is addicted to high stakes life of the yakuza. Together they journey through a city and time, where everything is changing constantly; yet in the end, it becomes apparent that none of these things really matter. This movie is really good. I recommend it.

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.

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.

Just for the young Mariko Kaga aged 21, Pale Flower is a must. She's playing a very complex character, her lovely face is half juvenile, half wild and sexy. She teams with a handsome yakusa much older than her, the cool Ryo Ikebe, very quiet and well-dressed. Eveything is perfect in this slow paced and atmospheric film noir, black and white cinematography, music, and a special mention to editing with so many spying glances.

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.