Imamura's Warm Water Under a Red Bridge

[Arnold M]

>From: "Don Brown" <the8thsamurai at hotmail.com>

>despite Mike's eloquent defense of the film the subject matter still 
appears 
>to be the creation of a repressed middle-aged (male) imagination.  

I skimmed the review in the new Eiga Geijutsu and it seemed to take it that 
way as well; it was an issue of whether or not the director could 'get it 
up'.  I don't really mean to defend the film, and when I sit back and 
casually think about it I still might agree with some of the negative 
responses.  However, I had different impressions (or rather more 
impressions) while watching and I'm not content to say it was obviously 
only sexist or it only tried to make women's sexuality look male etc. and 
just leave it at that.  Relatively speaking, I thought it packed many times 
the "feminism" as something like Freeze Me, which gave us a male-oriented 
sexploitation film while hiding behind a story supposedly about a "strong 
woman".  Did anyone get a different impression?  (Then again--and please 
correct me if my memory is off--I think Freeze Me got several positive 
comments in a previous Eiga Geijutsu.)  

I might go out to see Shinozaki's film if it's still playing (but a 9:25 
morning show in Shinjuku is so early!).  I'm still hoping to go the 
boid.net discussion on the 24th so I want to learn a little more about the 
director beforehand.  The last thing that got my tear ducts working... was 
probably Naruse's "Mother".  ;-)

By the way, I rented Gakko no Kaidan G again last weekend.  The Kurosawa 
short, Kodama, certainly fits right into his style.  If you can find it I'd 
recommend it to the Kurosawa Kiyoshi fans here.

Michael Arnold

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