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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I didn't know anything about this movie when a friend of mine recommended it in the most enthusiastic way. The guy is a a very young movie buff, with a keen interest in quality movies (experimental, avant-garde, new wave, independent, iconoclast, unorthodox, stuff like that). I share his interests (despite my old age), and any discussion we have is real brainstorming. Two days ago he told me about planning to organize kind of jam-session with friends of his age to watch a battery of movies (I declined the invitation: No Country for Old Men). "Funeral Procession of Roses" was mentioned in this context.

Back home I found references about the movie on the web, then a copy of the film on you Tube, with Spanish subtitles. I stayed long in night to watch the movie. Really a great cinematic experience. As I said, I didn't know anything about it, nor about director Toshio Matsumoto. A movie from 1969, belonging to the "Nuberu Bagu", the Japanese New Wave, recalling all I knew about that period in the history of Nippon cinema, first of all bringing back to my memory the four or five movies by Oshima that I had the chance to watch.

You say "Nuberu Bagu", you say Buñuel on the steroids; and the film of Matsumoto is no exception: the ending scene of "Funeral Procession of Roses" is a direct reference to the beginning of "Un Chien Andalou": tribute paid to the famous scene from Buñuel, also creative re-enactment, also shifting the sense of it toward new territory, toward Buñuel encountering Aeschylus and Sophocles on a street in Tokyo among busy passers-by.

It's not a movie for the sissies, this "Funeral Procession of Roses". It acts on multiple strata, and each strata is challenging. A movie solidly placed in the underground culture, exploring the gay universe - a night club of sorts with two drag queens in bitter conflict, the club owner trying to keep the balance between them. All this approached with a raw Neorealist eye, à la Fellini, à la Juan Antonio Bardem. Over the plot comes a documentary, every now and then the action is stopped and one or other of the actors is interviewed: a movie about trans genders, played by trans genders, how do they view their sexual condition, how do they relate with the movie they play in. Is it a documentary about a gay movie on the making? Is it just a documentary about the LGBT condition, using feature sequences to emphasize some points? Actually everything in the movie is left in an indeterminate state, and this is on purpose. Is it a feature or a documentary? Are the actors playing actors, a movie within a movie? Are those guys trans genders, or girls impersonating trans genders, or what? Is the paradigm of Oedipus (re-enacted in the movie in a quirky way) just what we know it is? Is this a supremely iconoclastic interpretation of Augusto Monterosso's "La cucaracha soñadora" - moved in a Tokyo gay bar of the sixties? ("There was a cockroach named Gregor Samsa who was dreaming he was a cockroach named Franz Kafka who was dreaming he was an author writing some story about a clerk named Gregor Samsa who was dreaming he was a cockroach"). Gosh, no!

And I think this is the ultimate meaning of the Funeral Procession of Roses: it speaks us about the frailty of our certitudes: be it reality versus illusion of reality, be it gender strict determination, be it our ultimate identity. "Mis circunstancias son como las suyas. Ésa es una de las razones"... Yep, not for the sissies.

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

"Funeral Parade of Roses" is an underrated unknown work of Japanese gay cinema. It was one of Stanly Kubric's favorite films, and it had a significant influence on the the style of "A Clockwork Orange". The film deals with Japanese drag queens, including the clubs, rivalry and their sex lives. In an Oedipus fashion, except reversed, the main character kills his mother so he can have relations with his father. Director Toshio Matsumato seemed to be way ahead of his time for his portrayal of sexuality and violence on screen. Also in a Bergman like fashion, actors are interviewed so the audience realizes it's only a movie.(and a twisted one at that) The film has many hallucinatory scenes, and who could forget the drag queens using urinals. There's also a weird fight scene between the two drag queens, and when they yell comic bubbles pop out of their mouths. Thank God this movie is in black & white! It's very brutal, disturbing and violent at times; so watch with caution. "Funeral Parade of Roses", is simply shocking and brilliant!