Rating: NR
Genre:
Fantasy
Theatrical Release: 05/03/2002(USA
Release Date: 06/24/2003
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: Japanese
Run Time: 119 Minutes
Flags: Sexual Situations
Distributor/Studio: Homevision
In 1998, Japanese auteur
Shohei Imamura announced his retirement with his wild and wooly war drama
Kanzo Sensei. His announcement clearly proved to be premature, as exhibited by this bizarre romantic drama about the power of really good sex, based on a book by
Henmi Yo.
Koji Yakusho -- who starred in
Imamura's
Unagi along with virtually every Japanese indie film of note in the late '90s -- is
Yosuke, a once successful marketing exec for an architecture film who is now out of work and separated from his wife. One of his few friends is
Taro (
Kazuo Kitamura), an aging bum living under a blue tarp with his collection of rare books. During one of his drunken rants,
Taro tells
Yosuke of a golden Buddha he stole from a temple in Kyoto and stashed in a ramshackle house adjacent to a red bridge on the rugged Noto peninsula. After
Taro dies,
Yosuke ventures to the hinterland to see if he can find the priceless statue, and he finds the house, which is inhabited by a senile confectionery maker (
Imamura regular
Mitsuko Baisho) and by her vivacious granddaughter
Saeko (
Misa Shimizu).
Yosuke's first indication that
Saeko is quite unlike the other girls is when he spies her stealing cheese from a local market. She later tells him that her body is a spring of water that wells up within her. The only means of relief is by doing something naughty -- like shoplifting -- or by engaging in a vigorous round of sex. Soon the two are enthusiastically exchanging fluids, so much so that water blasts from
Saeko's nether regions like a fire hose. As the water flows to the nearby creek, fish cluster around to cavort in its special properties.
Yosuke decides to stick around, landing a job as a fisherman, not only to service
Saeko's special needs, but also to look for the Buddha. This film was screened at the
2001 Cannes Film Festival and at the
2001 Toronto Film Festival.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
;)
