Fleur pâle

Ryo Ikebe is perfect as the super-cool, sharply dressed ex-con who willingly seals his own fate despite his obvious intelligence and powers of perception. His body language is crisp and economical and his life experience is etched into his face. He is the Japanese doppleganger of the under-appreciated (except by Tarrantino) American actor Robert Forster. This is actually worthy of a remake starring Forster but I heavily doubt if any filmmaker can recreate the style and panache that Mr. Shinoda injected into every shot of the astonishing cinematography. In an interview on the DVD extra, he says that nihilism was his main theme but it's a quiet, shadow-covered nihilism, not explosive and bombastic. There are very few scenes of violence; action is not the show here. The heart of the film is the undefinable relationship between the adrenaline-loving rich girl and the yakuza hit man. Shinoda likens his position in life as the embodiment of post-war Japan caught between the Soviet Union and the USA. The climactic hit is brilliantly choreographed, shot and scored. Certain elements of Pale Flower evoked memories of The Face of Another, a totally different type of film that also explored the existential subjects of solitude, isolation and alienation.

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.

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.

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.

Whereas "Blue Velvet" is about the lengths that people go to for sexual gratification, "Pale Flower" is about that lengths that people go to for a few "kicks," kind of like a Japanese gangster adaptation of Kerouac's "On the Road."

Upon attempting to release "Pale Flower," the studio's censor banned the film, and this fact says quite a bit about the temperature of Post-War Japan's pop culture, and the target audience of this film. While the director claims the film is about Japan's uncertain stance in the Cold War, it may be more accurate to say that the film is about Shinoda's Nihilistic stance towards Japan's relationship to the world's superpowers.

And while nihilism describes Shinoda, existentialism may better describe Muraki and Saeko. Gambling, animalistic sex, drugs, all in an effort to just feel something, anything, and to get lost in the moments those emotions provide. Some would say that the gambling scenes are too long and do little to advance the plot, but this movie's script is made up mostly of unspoken dialogue and it is during the gambling scenes that the main characters are developed.

While I loved 95 percent of this film's moody and atmospheric lighting, at times it's so dark you can't tell what's going on. Still, the shots are well constructed, the actors well directed, and their performances subtle yet effective. Dig the sexual tension that is constantly building between Muraki and Saeko, and how this tension is dealt with. Somehow I felt myself sympathizing with this killer in a very real way, and this says something about Shinoda's and "Pale Flowers" success.