Red Whale, White Snake

[Aaron Gerow]

On 2007.7.4, at 10:46  PM, Michael E Kerpan, Jr. wrote:

> I see from Amazon Japan that this new-ish film starring Kyoko Kagawa is
> supposed to come out on DVD in late August (presumably unsubbed).  Upon
> Googling, I find mention of a review by J-J's own Aaron G -- but the 
> link is
> dead.  Anyone have a live link?  Or know of other (substantial) English
> reviews.

Here's my review from the Daily Yomiuri:

Title: Akai Kujira to Shiroi Hebi
Director: Yoshiko Senbon
Starring: Kyoko Kagawa, Miyoko Asada, Mao Miyaji, Mari Banno, Kirin Kiki
Rating: ***

	Yoshiko Senbon, like the characters in Akai Kujira to Shiroi Hebi, is 
probably being true to herself. A grand veteran of the television 
industry, who started working there during the very first days of 
Japanese television in 1953, she probably realized that now at age 78, 
the tube was not going to offer many more opportunities for a woman her 
age to tell stories she felt truthful. In the age of trendy dramas and 
owarai, Japanese television is mostly for young people, and must 
accommodate set patterns of corporate entertainment.
	Senbon wanted to tell a tale about a woman her age remembering World 
War Two. There was little chance that project would get by today’s 
television producers, so she decided to be true to herself and make a 
film. That’s how Senbon became one of the oldest rookie feature film 
directors in movie history.
	For a long time she was one of the only woman directors in the 
television industry, so it is not surprising decided to focus on women 
in her debut work. Akai Kujira to Shiroi Hebi features five women of 
different ages. And that’s it. No men to speak of.
	It reminds me of Tamizo Ishida’s Hana chirinu (Flowers Have Fallen, 
1938), a masterful jidaigeki without a single male figure appearing on 
screen. One can see a couple men in Akai Kujira to Shiroi Hebi (though 
none with significant lines), but like Ishida’s film, Senbon’s work 
focuses on a group of women in a particular place.
	In this case, it is an old house in Tateyama. Yasue (Kyoko Kagawa), at 
age 75, is riding the bullet train with her 20-something granddaughter 
Akemi (Mao Miyaji), set to move in with her children, when the 
conductor announces Tateyama. She suddenly decides to get off because 
she stayed in Tateyama during the war. Leading a flustered Akemi, she 
discovers her thatched-roof house is still standing, now the residence 
of Mitsuko (Miyoko Asada) and her teenage daughter Rika (Mari Banno).
	To Yasue, it is a trip down memory lane, but Mitsuko wants to forget 
her past. As a reminder of the fact her husband suddenly left her three 
years before, the house is set to be torn down next month. But 
Mitsuko’s kindly accepts Yasue’s request to stay the night.
	Rika thinks the house has been summoning people, and indeed Midori 
(Kirin Kiki), who lived there a decade age, also shows up that night. 
Now there are five women from different generations, each experiencing 
a kind of crisis: Akemi discovers she’s pregnant, Midori is on the run 
after fleecing her customers, and even Mika has her first menstruation.
	At the center is Yasue, however, who remembers the house being 
inhabited by a spirit in the form of a white snake that told her to be 
true to herself. It is her search for that snake, which brings back 
suppressed memories of the war and the young lives meaninglessly lost, 
that prompts all the women to recall the value of memory and the need 
to be true to themselves.
	If the story seems a bit too clean-cut and moralistic, perhaps it is 
because Akai Kujira to Shiroi Hebi does remind one of good television 
dramas from the 1960s and 1970s, which were centered on 
well-structured, unambiguous and dramatically efficient scripts. That 
can seem a bit outdated now, and the characters in the film are 
certainly all a bit too good to fit our more poisonous times (although 
Kiki nearly steals the show as the warped supplement saleslady). But 
Senbon and her screenwriter Motofumi Tomokawa do effectively explore 
the grey zones between black and white lies, between dreams and 
memories.
	Being honest to herself thus meant, for Senbon, telling a history of 
the forces, both good and bad, that have pressed women not to be true 
to themselves. In finally saying this on film, Senbon surely hopes to 
leave this truth as a memory for the new women entering this world to 
hear and learn from.