Cheap Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu (DVD) (Shohei Imamura) Price

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Customer Reviews of Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu

delight and a wonderfully light-hearted romp
Working in the vein of magical realism, director Shohei Imamura spins a yarn of Yosuke (Koji Yakusho), an unemployed salaryman who lives on the dole in Tokyo. He wires his welfare money to his estranged wife while living in "the lower depths" with colorful characters such as Taro (Kazuo Kitramura), "the Blue Tent Philosopher." Prompted by Taro's death and his past encouragement to seize the moment while he can still get a hard-on, Yosuke travels to a small seaside Noto village in search of Taro's long-left treasure. <
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>Once there, Yosuke falls in with the locals who surpass the expected "quirky locals" stereotypes and, instead, appear closer to interesting individuals. At the center of Yosuke's attention is Saeko (Misa Shimizu), a soggy strumpet who, like her (apparently) senile grandmother, suffers from an ailment where she retains water in a most unusual way. <
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>Imamura focuses on issues of filial piety, virility and love with wry, ribald humor. WARM WATER is a delight and a wonderfully light-hearted romp by a seasoned master.

strange elements effortlessly weaved together
Imamura does here what Neil Jordan does in Crying Game; he takes two seemingly incongruous elements, fetishistic sexual obsession and contemporary sociopolitical malaise, and weaves them effortlessly together. Imamura's rigorously geometric framing contrasts with the feathery-light content of the tale. Having said that, there are some gritty moments here; a drowning born of insanity is rendered in stark black-and-white, and the social plight of Japan's cast-aside middle-aged salarymen is emblematically captured in Yakusho's performance. However, at heart this is a fun movie that surprises and delights. It is all about the mise-en-scene, perfectly delivered each time by Imamura and the principles. The film does flag at the end; it felt like they opted to go for melodrama purely because the allotted time was running out. The previous two acts make up for that third-act missed beat. One gripe is that the edition I bought had no Extras apart from the theatrical trailer. I would have liked a Making Of to confirm my suspicion that this film was as much fun to make as it is to watch. It must have been murder for cast and crew to keep a straight face during those venting scenes...