Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, but haunting
Review: This is a film about human sexuality. It is not pleasant. Takuro Yamashita, played very effectively by Koji Yakusho, gets an anonymous letter telling him that his young, pretty wife is entertaining another man while he is out fishing at night, this after she lovingly prepares and packs his supper. He goes fishing but returns home early in time to catch them in medias res. In a cold rage he knifes his wife to death. He bicycles to the police station and turns himself in. Eight years later he gets out of prison. This is where our story begins.Yamashita, now embittered toward others, and especially women, is on parole. He sets up a barber shop in a small town. He keeps a pet eel because he feels that the eel "listens" to him when he talks. One day he discovers a woman (Keiko Hattari, played by the beautiful Misa Shimizu) in some nearby bushes who has taken an overdose in a suicide attempt. He brings help and she is saved. She then enters his life as his assistant. Her presence challenges the emotional isolation he is seeking and forces him to face not only his future but his past. The eel itself (a wet "snake") symbolizes sexuality. When this sexuality is confined it is under control. When it is let loose it is dark and deep and mysterious. Director Shohei Imamura's technique is plodding at times, and striking at others. His women are aggressive sexually even though, in the Japanese "princess" style, they may look younger than spring time. His men can be brutal. Their emotions, confined by society as the eel is confined by its tank, sometimes burst out violently. For many viewers the pace of this film will be too slow, and for others the sexuality depicted will offend. For myself and others who are accustomed to seeing the faces of the players in long close ups on TV and in Western movies, Imamura's medium shots and disinclination to linger on the countenances of his actors will disappoint. Yakusho's face suggests the very depth and mystery that Imamura is aiming at, yet I don't think the camera lingers there enough. Also disappointing is how little we really see of Misa Shimizu's expressions. Chiho Terada, who plays the murdered wife, is also very pretty and completely convincing, but we see little of her. Her expression just before dying, a combination of shamelessness and resignation, funereal acceptance even, was unforgettable. This is very much worth seeing, but expect to be irritated by the how slowly it unravels and by the central character's stubborn refusal to forgive both himself and his late wife, and his inability to embrace the life that is now his.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet and low (key)
Review: Welcome to Sawara, a small lakeside dormitory town a couple ofhours outside Tokyo. As nerdy local boys try to summon aliens with home-made crop circles, a quiet newcomer (Koji Yakusho) takes over the derelict local barber's shop. All he cares about is fishing, but when he saves the life of a local girl (Misa Shimizu) and offers her a job, everyone suspects they are having an affair. But he's a paroled wife-murderer. She's pregnant by her underworld ex-boyfriend (Tetsuo's Tomoroh Taguchi, in the role of a lothario loanshark). And his best friend is his pet eel. Imamura's first film since Black Rain is a gentle romantic comedy, where even the jokes are shy. The dashing Yakusho is charmingly miscast as ever in another emasculated salaryman role ... Even as a murderer, you can't help giving him the benefit of the doubt. As his would-be wife, Shimizu is a virtuous, hard-working girl-next-door who simply wants to find the way home. With madness in the family and a past she regrets, she's attempted suicide to 'punish herself' for alleged misdeeds. This makes her a replacement for Yakusho's adulterous wife in more ways than one - not the least as a second chance. As he boats out on occasional fishing trips, it's she who fishes for him, dangling a packed lunch over the side of a bridge. The screenplay displays evidence of a script by committee, with the strong patterns and balances of Akira Yoshimura's original story 'Glittering in the Dark' suffering mild wear and tear from three screenwriters. One wants an erotic thriller, another a comedy about fishing, still another a quirky romance. A couple of scenes recall the hallucinatory dreamscapes of Trainspotting, others the lazy pastorals of On Golden Pond. The basic plot, of a city boy finding happiness in the sticks, is occasionally ill-at-ease, with scenes of ... sex (hence the 18 certificate) and scenes of brutality towards women (and eels). Imamura holds these disparate elements together, but in doing so overstays his welcome with superfluous subplots. The considerate subtitling by Stuart J. Walton only suffers through the occasional annoyance of being printed white-on-white, and the dilemma of an ending that is only unambiguous if you know what a Japanese bridal gown looks like. It's a sweet film, and as revealingly 'Japanese' as many others - but without the attachment of Imamura as director, it could have been made for television as Second Chances or The Eel Man & the Loan Shark, which might just have trimmed off the excess running time and left it just as charming.
Rating: 
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF 1999
Review: When this foreign film came out in 1999, it got 4 stars from The San Francisco Chronicle. As a result, there were long lines at the UC Theater in Berkeley, which is where I saw this terrific movie! I don't know where to begin. The beginning of the film caught my eye and I knew that this was going to be great. All I remember is that the director shot a red street light from an interesting angle--very Bergmanesque. Everyone has already talked about what this film is about so I'm not going to repeat them. I will say this though--the characters were great: funny and perceptively drawn. After the main character is released from prison, he has no desire to go back to the City and instead chooses to live in a small village as a barber. All he wants is his own little space in the world. Is that asking for too much? Apparently it was because a woman throws a monkey wrench into his plans. This part of the film reminded me of the Ben Kingsley character in Turtle Diary (another excellent film!). I don't want to spoil the ending but there is a terrific scene in the barber shop that is totally hilarious. This part of the film reminded me of Tampopo and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I can't wait for it to come out in DVD.
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