Manji (Masumura, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.15pm
68th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (9th - 20th October 2024) DAY 7
With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as the Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews,
so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics
who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes,
Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.
So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the
reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I
am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within
the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the
major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is
little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see
films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London
Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming
months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.
Here then (from October 9th to October 20th) are the films you are likely
to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in
London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't
worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always
some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each
screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.
Time Out review:
Because it's adapted from an unimpeachable literary source (Junichiro
Tanizaki's novel) and has a magnificent cast, this torrid melodrama
verges on the status of art movie classic; but Yasuzo Masumura's earthy tastes
keep it safely anchored in sexploitation territory. Bored, rich wife
Sonoko (Kyoko Kishida), whose inherited wealth has set up her husband's law
firm, grows infatuated with a younger woman she meets in art class. They
become lovers. But Sonoko (who narrates the story to a silent
psychiatrist) soon learns that Mitsuko (Ayako Wakao) is a deceitful and
endlessly manipulative tease, dubiously involved with the supposedly
impotent Eijiro (Yusuke Kawazu) and all too ready to draw Sonoko's husband
Kotaro (Eiji Funakoshi) into her ranks of slavish admirers. As the plot
descends into a miasma of suicide pacts, cross-manipulations, blackmail,
tests of loyalty, fake pregnancies and absurd blood oaths, Masumura
lifts it back up into the emotional overdrive which has made the film a
pillar of its genre. Wakao (a Daiei contract actress who starred in
nearly half of Masumura's films after both worked on Mizoguchi's Street of Shame) proves more than equal to a role which prefigures Hanna Schygulla's classy slut in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant by nearly a decade. The Buddhist title connotes spiritual radiance.
Tony Rayns
Here (and above) are extracts.
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