Not a lovely film but sad instead and full of horrible men, as often in Japan with the yakuza, but it is a rather unusual film. This begins with a prostitute, Yoshie (Miyuki Kuwano) in Shinjuku, the familiar Tokyo nightlife district area and picked up by Fujii (Keisuke Sonoi) and they go for tea. Later on the story flashes back to when she was six years younger and happily working in a bar and she meets up with a guy and that is Eiji (Mikijiro Hira). She thought that Fujii was a customer, although he begins to fall in love but instead she gets in with the hoodlum, Eiji, how started her on the street as she gradually tells her story to Fujii. As I say it is very sad but we almost know what is going to happen and we have seen it many times. This is rather long and slow but beautifully done with amazing saturated colours as the cinematographer says with 'neon, electric light, fluorescent light' are wonderful and even when they fade, not black but blue. Towards the end we know it is going to be obvious although there is a surprise. Mijuki Kuwano is beautiful and I had seen her in Cruel Story of Youth (1960) full of nasty men, of course, but that was in b/w (directed by Nagisa Oshima only his second film) and both the films are of Japanese New Wave, which begins with people like Oshima and almost ends with this colour film.
