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Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion (1985).The opening shot of Shinji Sômai’s Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion (1985) is 14 minutes long, probing an oneiric palace of artifice. The camera surveys a miniaturized series of homes that represent different stages in the life of an orphan, marching from storybook mistreatment meted out by her foster family, to a questionable attachment to an unorthodox—though caring—father figure, who relieves the toil foisted upon her. The snow globe ambiance provides a sandbox for Sômai’s storied formalism, the camera and the set engaged in a symbiotic give-and-take, filling in blanks when one or the other is totally spent. Events occur at an unsteady clip; years are skipped over with little more than a panning motion. But then, this climate of impressionistic memory is ruptured: a smash cut reintroduces Iori (Yuki Saito), now a perilously carefree teenager, suspended over the all-too-real pavement as she...

After he had cut ties with production company Nikkatsu, director Seijun Suzuki struggled for a long time to find new projects, due to the structure of the Japanese film industry as a whole and his recognition as someone who could not follow orders. With “Zigeunerweisen”, released over a decade after his last work for Nikkatsu, he returned to the spotlight in a way, directing a feature that would also mark a blend of his former stylistic approach as well as new themes and aesthetics. “Kagero-za” is the second entry into the so-called Taisho trilogy, named after the period all three features are set in, and is widely regarded as perhaps the best one in the series. While the feature may prove just as challenging for the viewer, narratively and stylistically, as the other entries in the trilogy, the story about disorientation as well as past and present longings contains some...