Swastika

First, The title in English is Swastika & does not in any way relate to Nazis. Second there are many reviews that call this a Pink Eiga film. It is not at all. There is no nudity or sex scenes at all. Reviews that probably never actually watched this film. There is a gay element.

This is the original film based on the novel Quicksand. A melodrama we never learn much about the characters. We do learn and follow the relationship between them which contains a lot of complexity. We learn more about the relationships as the story progresses. In other words it gets better along the way. But the ending was a bit of a let down. I won't spoil it but it's the weakest part of the movie.

The acting is exceptional. Kyoko Kishida is amazing as Sonoko. Ayako Wakao was a huge star when this film was made. Direction is first-rate.

This film has been remade numerous times including most recently "Quicksand -reverse-." I won't call them better or worse but mostly different. This version is a classic and highly recommended.

What do you get when you combine early-60's hairdo's and makeup, histrionic Japanese love triangles and forbidden lesbian passion? In this case, a wonderfully bonkers movie that deserves a larger cult audience.

Any movie that features blood oaths, suicide pacts, taboo love affairs and a wife screaming "You don't love me enough! I need more love!" is one I'll want to see again and again. (Too bad it's so hard to come by in the U.S. -- the film screened recently at the American Cinematheque and Outfest in L.A., and at the San Francisco Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, but apparently only after much paperwork with Japan. Still, if you actually get a chance to see it, DO NOT MISS IT!

Lurid. Hysterical. Gaping improbabilities and plot holes. I thought this might be a must-see because of the presence of Kyoko Kishida, long-faced, thick-lipped, huge-eyed woman in Suna no onna made the same year as Manji and the bizarre nurse in Tanin no kao made two years later. Turns out her other-worldliness was Teshigahara's invention. She's had a much varied 44 year career, mostly away from us here. See Manji for Teshigahara's woman and nurse.

The other woman, despite a long, somewhat distinguished career, looks and acts like an Elizabeth Taylor stand-in tumbled out of Tennessee Williams land. But surely this is director Masmura's invention.

(Manji, by the way, is the Buddhist cross on the DVD box.)

Wonderful film based on the novel "Quicksand" by Juinichiro Tanizaki and directed by the great Japanese director Yasuzô Masumura, the film tells the story of a married woman who begins a sick and obsessive love relationship with a beautiful and ruthless young girl (played by a marvelous Ayako Wakao), that insane relationship will lead to a tragic ending ...

The movie tells a story about passion, love and betrayal, displaying tons of sensuality stylishly without need of being explicit...

The are too many other versions of this movie made years later but I highly doubt that they can come any closer to this piece of art...

MASTERPIECE

You know what ground you're treading with Manji from the get go. From the swastika (the titular Manji) that announces the film's title, there's nothing understated about it. The story of lesbian love between the middle-class wife of a lawyer and a strikingly gorgeous model who poses for painters at the centre of Manji is not of the suggestive 'glances and gestures' variety, this is not a drama on homosexual love repressed by a rigid Japanese society, rather a soaring melodrama masquerading a seemy underbelly of lies and morbid obsession.

It's true that the movie requires on the part of the viewer a few jumps in logic. It asks him to accept that two complete strangers become so obsessed with each other in a matter of days. But this is a two hour movie neatly crammed in 90 minutes so the narrative economy is not wasted. Out of the sweet, alluring love affair between the two women director Yasuzo Masumura twists a progressively more nightmarish, demented scenario, a convoluted story of fatal obsession, the addiction to a perverse love, the need to control and be controlled and how quick humans are to elevate other humans to a pedestal, eager to worship and die for them.

If the movie seems to be twisting and writhing under the burden of its own narrative weight, with small alliances, blood oaths, rifts and reconciliations and all manner of cajoling and petty chicanery taking place between the four major participants (the two women, the husband of one and fiancé of the second) as each tries to win the object of his desire or fend someone else from doing so, stick with it. Masumura has paced the film and shaped his story so expertly that, by the one hour mark, this tale of domestic treachery has spiralled out of control into full blown paranoia, a bizarre and creepy psychological horror film of sorts that happens so naturally and feels so perfectly plausible at that point as to excuse the more overwrought tendencies that preceed it.

The movie reflects that kind of claustrophobic obsession on every level. Limited cast, tight shots, static camera, close grouping of the actors in the frame, no exterior shots, monotonous piano score. Any way you see it, this is a minor aesthetic triumph for Masumura. Strongly recommended.