Água Quente Sob uma Ponte Vermelha

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge directed by the prolific Shohei Imamura follows the life of Yosuke Sasano played by Koji Yakusho. The film has many rich layers and mythic qualities. After losing his job, Yosuke seeks advice from a vagrant wise man name Taro, played by Kazuo Kitamura. Taro ultimately sends Yosuke on a quest to find a hidden golden budda statue. Itfs not so much the statue thatfs important we learn when Yosuke travels to a small fishing village to a house beside the red bridge where we meet Saeko Aizawa who befriends Yosuke to releases her body of water from her very strange condition.

The filling water in Saeko body symbolizes her loneliness and her heaviness of heart to find someone in her life. The gag where Yosuke relieves Seikofs water is fun the first time but soon becomes repetitive. The characters in the story are disjointed from each other but this is not nessearly a bad thing since Imamura has so much to show us. For instance there is a subplot involving an African marathon runner which is used clearly for comic relief but and has nothing to do with the rest of the story. But its characters like this that adds multiple dimensions to the story that really make it memorable.

One thing that confused me was that there was a scene of Saeko almost drowned in the river when she was small and it makes audience imagine that it was probably the cause of flood in her body. However, in the end of the movie we will know that her grandma also had the same sexual predisposition contradicting the river scene.

Overall the film is worth watching for the quirkiness of the characters. A man who just lost his job, homeless people, fishermen, a senile old lady, an African marathon runner, there are a lot of unique characters in this movie. They are people at the bottom of the Japanese social pyramid and something we usually do not see in the movie. The story is a kind of silly, erotic, and funny. Although not a perfect film the fountain spewing sex scenes will be remembered for a long time.

This movie definitely had some flaws, not-so slight repetitiveness being the most glaring. However, I give it an 8, because the more I think about it, the more I like it.

If there has ever been a more effulgent, effluvient celebration of feminine sexuality on screen, I haven't seen it.

Seemingly infantile at first, the film continues to mature in my estimation. For instance, when the granddaughter confronts the salary man with her belief that he's only with her because she satisfies his kink, it comes across quite clearly as the primal scream erupting from that nagging "You only want me because fill-in-your-own-neuroses" doubt that most woman have felt in many relationships, at least fleetingly.

There are several such moments in the movie, but it is more of a fantasy romp than a psychological study or feminist manifesto, so I'll leave it there.

Good fun, attractive leads, check it out.

I was eager to see WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE - from the description on the back of the DVD I wasn't really expecting this to be THE EEL or BLACK RAIN but if it's junk, it is very well-crafted junk. The story (well commented upon below) is quirky/kinky and provocative, which is well-handled, and a few scenes were hilarious. The cinematography is beautiful - Imamura's films always have a very striking look, and on this front this film doesn't disappoint. WARM WATER... has a strong 'magic realist' quality - more than anything it reminded me a bit of some of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez' novels (if only Imamura had stuck in a failed insurgency or a grandmother floating into the sky). I didn't always know what to make of it - the mix of realism, quirkiness, kink, cuteness, humor, small-town mundanity and erotic strangeness all taken at once made me wonder what if anything Imamura might be trying to say (aside from the fact that reality can be strange and life doesn't fit so neatly into compartments). So - no masterpiece, but fans of Imamura won't want to miss it.

This film is not a as good as Imamura's "The Eel", but is hauntingly memorable. The plot leaves a bit to be desired ,but the characters and the situations are engaging and intriguing. Like "The Eel" the film is populated by people outside of mainstream society, misfits and "losers", but all the more endearing for it. The film is full of memorable vignettes, the fishermen by the river, the couple who run the guest-house, the family run fishing business and the African runner. All of these characters and situations have hand in the transformation of the central character's transformation from unhappy salaryman, trapped by mainstream society, to an outsider with a new found freedom. This and "The Eel" have similar qualities to the films of Julio Medem. A sort of Japanese magical realism.

Imamura does here what Neil Jordan does in Crying Game; he takes two seemingly incongruous elements, fetishistic sexual obsession and contemporary socio-political malaise, and weaves them effortlessly together. Imamura's rigorously geometric framing contrasts with the feathery- light content of the tale. Having said that, there are some gritty moments here; a drowning born of insanity is rendered in stark black-and-white, and the social plight of Japan's cast-aside middle-aged salarymen is emblematically captured in Yakusho's performance. However, at heart this is a fun movie that surprises and delights. It is all about the mise-en-scene, perfectly delivered each time by Imamura and the principles. The film does flag at the end; it felt like they opted to go for melodrama purely because the allotted time was running out. The previous two acts make up for that third-act missed beat. One gripe is that the edition I bought had no Extras apart from the theatrical trailer. I would have liked a Making Of to confirm my suspicion that this film was as much fun to make as it is to watch. It must have been murder for cast and crew to keep a straight face during those venting scenes...