Funeral Parade of Roses

An underground art-house hit that is said to have influenced Stanley Kubrick when he came to make "A Clockwork Orange", "Funeral Parade of Roses" has built up a considerable reputation over the years and since it deals with the lives of a group of trans bar-workers in Japan, has also become something of a gay classic. It's mostly plotless, more a series of fragments built around the character of Eddie who works as a hostess and is played by Peter who was also in Kurosawa's "Ran" and it's filmed by director Toshio Matsumoto as a kind of homage to black and white gangster flics filtered through the gaze of someone like Godard and it's as much about the process of making a movie as anything else. It's certainly one of a kind and very much an acquired taste. Brilliant, indlugent, pretentious; it's all of these but at least it's never boring.

In a key moment around the half-way mark in Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses, the young protagonist Eddie, a transsexual working in Tokyo, stabs his mother's lover and then his mother himself. Matsumoto's film is full of Oedipal subtexts, but here Eddie kills his mother to (perhaps) get to his father, so it is the reverse of the Oedipus story. In fact, most of the film is 'backwards' in the traditional sense, full of narrative tricks, contrasting styles and shifts in tone, moving from melodrama to documentary to horror with each scene.

Eddie (played by real-life queen Pita) is a drag-queen working at a top Tokyo underground club ran by Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya). Eddie is the top attraction at the club, much to the envy of ageing madam Leda (Osamu Ogasawara). When Gonda starts a secret affair with Eddie, Leda finds out and plans to hurt and disfigure Eddie in her jealousy. Running alongside this fictional storyline are various interviews with the real-life queens who act in the film, who offer insights about life in Tokyo for queens and how the film will represent them.

There was a huge boom in Japan in the 1960's of films now known as Japanese New Wave. Funeral Parade of Roses is certainly one of the most daring and technically innovative, stripping back genre (and even cinematic) conventions to create one of the most important films in the history of Gay Cinema. This leads to an occasionally confusing and head- spinning film, that can switch quickly from a generic love scene to a moment of avant-garde (an argument between two queens have them shouting at each other with speech bubbles) to a bloody set-piece. One of the most inspirational films to come out of Japan, this was a favourite of Stanley Kubrick's, and no doubt the scenes that are played out in fast- forward were an influence on A Clockwork Orange (1971). Uncompromising, unapologetic cinema.

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An unsettling and astonishing Japanese film that introduced me to the Japanese New Wave movement.

"Funeral Parade of Roses," like many of the best works of art, defies description or categorization. It dives into the Japanese gay sub-culture of the 1960s, and specifically young gay men who dress and act like women. It blurs the line between fact and fiction; at times, the actors in the movie become actors in a movie within the movie, and the movie itself becomes a documentary about the making of a movie about gay Japanese youths. If you can follow that sentence, then you're on the way to having the right sensibility to enjoy this film.

It's a shocking movie too, going places most other films at the time, and certainly few American movies, would dare. The only big American movie I can think of from that time period that comes even close to tackling subjects that general audiences would find equally unsavory is "Midnight Cowboy," and this film makes that one look like a Doris Day romp in comparison.

Grade: A

If you really are looking for a good time in a movie theatre - watch this movie ! It has been said that some of Kubrick's visual and sonic ideas for "Clockwork Orange" were inspired by this movie; after having seen it, i'm more than convinced that this is true.

This movie offers a lot of cinematic ideas and it uses surprising ways to make a point within a story.

What is the reason that films with a spirit and mood like that have vanished from the screen ? Have the politics in the movie industry really become so strict ? This movie watched nowadays has (but maybe had always) a subversive feel to it, why is that ?

It definitely offers something different and therefore would be very welcome in movie theatres and videostores around the world to free us from all the uninspired formula movies.

I am not a fan of avent-garde films, which I find are often pretentious and silly, but I enjoyed "Funeral Parade of Roses", primarily because I found the main character "Eddie" (played by Shinnosuke Ikehata aka "Peter") fascinating. The film is a non-linear composite of drama and documentary like vérité punctuated by abstract inclusions (jump cuts to stills, substitution splices, etc), some of which are more effective than others. Supposedly, Kubrick drew inspiration for "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) from this film and there are certainly some similarities (at one point Eddie looks straight at the camera through up cast eyes in a scene that reminded me of the iconic opening shot of "Alex" in Kubrick's film). Lacking much of a plot, "Funeral Parade of Roses" primarily peers into Tokyo's gay scene and follows Eddie, a transvestite 'bar girl' as he moves amoungst his friends (including pretentious auteur 'Guevara') in hopes of luring boss Gonda (Yoshio Tsuchiya) from rival, and bar 'Madame', Leda (Osamu Ogasawara), perhaps becoming 'Madame' himself. The black-and white cinematography is lovely, the characters intriguing and photogenic and the direction, for the most part, excellent (the interminable toking scene not withstanding). While the film is nonlinear, there is a traditional 'climactic' sequence at the end that is well worth waiting for and explains many of the references to the film being an Oedipal myth. Not to everybody's tastes but well worth trying out.