Yaguchi Shinobu

[Joseph Murphy]

>Since i'm a fan of japanese films i saw "My Secret Cache" (Himitsu no
>hanazono) by Yaguchi Shinobu some time ago. I like this film and it
>has become one of my favorites. It's full of cliches but it's so
>refreshing different from american films. Any others here who saw this
>film and would give a short statement?
>Greetings
>Sascha

I can't say about "My Secret Cache" because I haven't been able to get a
look at it yet, but I had a similar sort of feeling about Yaguchi's two
previous films, "Rain Women "  (Ame no onna, 1990)  and "Down the Drain"
(Hadashi no pikkunikku, 1993), that there's something "refreshingly
different" about them that you can't quite put your finger on.  They both
have this kind of anarchic pace and scary slapstick energy that makes you
laugh at some strange preconscious level.
Yaguchi seems to have come up totally independent through the Pia Film
Festival (no background in TV, advertising, studio asst. directing, etc.).
"Rain Women" is a 72minute, 8mm film that won the PIA grand prize, and
"Down the Drain" is the 16mm feature he made with the resulting scholarship
money.   Sato Tadao describes the first film like this:  "The story of two
young women who live together in a house in some unspecified provincial
city, these women comport themselves in a totally selfish and capricious
way without the slightest regard for the feelings of others.  And for some
reason or another, everywhere they go rain starts to fall.  The level of
chaos and disorder Yaguchi achieves here is not to be lightly dismissed."
(that's from v. 4 of his Nihon eigashi).  So, it appears it's not just
american films that they're different from.
"Down the Drain" is a similarly chaotic stuff, but it seems to hit a chord
with U. S. audiences.  I screened it at the university theater here three
years ago, and the audience just loved it.  I STILL get people coming up to
me and asking about it.  "Something about Mary" is tame in comparison.
I think Aaron Gerow has a review of "My Secret Cache" on the Kinema Club
web site.
And, if anyone's interested, there's a special issue of the journal
PostScript on Contemporary Japanese Cinema just out (vol. 18, #1, Fall 98)
..  I have an article in it situating the PIA film festival and trying to
figure out why Yaguchi's work is so "refreshing" by comparing "Down the
Drain" with similar U. S. fare.

J. Murphy