Akutô

A servant's fanciful tale of a great local beauty to her boorish lord leads to obsession, bloodshed and war.

Some considerable way below Onibaba and Kuroneko, but with the magnificent Nobuko Otowa (surely the greatest Japanese actress of all) once again on board, Akutô still contains some powerful and haunting images, mostly of silent judgement and distaste passing over the faces of the powerless underlings forced to observe and accept the senseless events spiralling out of control, but they are fewer and further apart than one would like, and as a consequence the film drags a little. On top of that, most roles aren't fleshed out enough, and the presently available subtitles are notably poor.

As much a story about the power of stories as about lust or war, nothing really supernatural comes to pass and yet it still feels like a creepy campfire ghost story, which the Japanese (and Kaneto Shindo, especially) seem to do better than anyone else.

6¾ out of 10.