Recycling the love triangle premise of his earlier films
Gemini and Tokyo Fist, but dispensing with the horror/fantasy overtones of the
dispensing with the bloodspurting
brutality of the letter, A snake of June is the story of a couple first and foremost, not a genre film that
happens to have a couple as its subject
The couple in question are Rinko (stage actress Asuka
Kurosawa) and Shigenhiko (novelist Yuji Kotari), whose physical mismatch (she a
lithe beauty, he an overweight, balding neurotic obsessed with cleanliness) is
reflected in the complete lack of intimacy between them. They connect as human
being, but they live more like friends than as lovers and lead nearly
independent lives, Both seem comfortable with this coexistence, but the desires that lurk beneath its surface
are brought out with the introduction of ta third element into the
equation. When Rinko receives a package
of candid photographs of herself masturbating and the sender (played by Shinya
Tsukamoto himself) contacts her with the threat of exposing them to her
husband, she submits herself to the anonymous voyeur’s sexual games. In order
to get hold of all the negative and prints, the mysterious caller orders her to
complete a set of assignment that that are constantly on borderline between
humiliation and pleasure--the voyeur knows exactly what Rinko’s personal erotic
fantasies are and makes her act them out one by one.
Although the material lends itself all too easily to an
exploitative approach, Tsukamoto keeps his attention rigorously focused on the
characters and their emotional responses. A Snake of June never once feels like
exploitation –or worse, pornography – and the only explicitness on offer here
is in the actors’ faces rather than other part of their anatomy. The film is a
character piece, one that despite its intimate point of views manages to incorporate
the characters’ positions in the society. In order to confront her with what
she’s allowing herself to hide, the blackmailer forces her to play out her
innermost desires in public her to play out her into breaking a barrier, to
behave in a way that requires her to violate society’s rule of how she is
expected to behave, because it’s those rules that have allowed her to continue
living in denial of her own desires, to coexist with her husband instead of
sharing her life with him.
It’s in the aspect that the film reveals depth in its
attitude towards the female protagonist. Although the premise would suggest a
very male perspective, with the woman taking the role of object of sexual
gratification, the real gratification and liberation are Rinko’s Like the
female protagonist of Tokyo first, she develops into a self-aware and
self-confident individual in the touch with her own personality, a woman who
doesn’t let the rule imposed on her by her environment decide how she should
live her life. Without going so far as to call A Snake of June feminist,
Tsukamoto’s film protagonist that unfortunately is still all too rare in the
maledominated world of cinema, Japanese or otherwise (it won the Jury Prize at
the Venice Film Festival 2002,where French feminist director Catherine Breillat
was one of its staunchest supporters).
Despite doing away with the genre-based surface that has
been the most eye-catching, and popular, element of the director’s previous
work, stylistically this is instantly recognizable as a Tsukamoto film. Shot
blue-tinted monochrome, the images are
as beautiful and the photography and editing as intense as any of his earlier
efforts. Although he places more emphasis
than ever on the human form as is, untainted by mutation or mutilations, the
director dose occasionally add some of his beloved biomechanical imagery.
Thought seemingly at odds with the realistic tone of the film these moments
have a more symbolic function, serving as the visualization of the character’s
emotions. There fantasy scenes, only two in number, are both experienced by
Shigeniko, whose obsession allows for such delusions: His discovery of a huge
glob of filth in the sink (an exaggerated, almost mutant version of what most
of us hesitantly scrape from the drain on occasion) is what forms the catalyst
for these nightmarish visions.
With its focus on human beings and organic life (also
present in the incessant downpour that forms the backdrop to Rinko’s sexual
reawakening), rather than machinery and physical deformations, A Snake of June
might well be the thematic culmination of all of Tsukamoto’s past work. For the
same reason it might also prove to be the most accessible point of entry for
the uninitiated, illustrating that an artist doesn’t necessarily have to
compromise his message in order to communicate with a larger audience.
4 day / Photo shop CS5 / by Pen tablet reviews
Shinya Tsukamoto
A Snake of June
/2002/Japan
/2002/Japan
Cinematography Shinya Tsukamoto
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