Customer Reviews

Warm Water Under A Red Bridge

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A sublimely skewered shaggy-dog sex comedy from Shohei Imamura that takes up where Edward Yang's sober 'Yi-Yi' left off, and pulls it into a completely unexpected direction. Like Yang's film, Imamura's protagonist, Yosuke Sasano, is a computer programmer in crisis (in this case his business has gone under); he now spends his time being insulted by his horrid, hectoring wife on the phone, and living with river-side tramps. Like Yang's film, Imamura diagnoses the spiritual void at the heart of Far Eastern super-corporate economic success - one very Yang-like shot views Yosuke attending an interview from behind a chillingly impersonal window; the distance between viewer and protagonist makes his desperate grovelling to the Kafkaesque manager all the more pathetic - but his prescription couldn't be more different.

Initially, the film seems as methodical and meticulous in composition and tone as we would expect from a severe Oriental master, with complicated, multi-level, multi-frame compositions (the geometry of character groupings imposed on the geometry of place - see the triangle of friends overlooking the corpse in his tent in the opening sequence) staged thoughtfully for a static camera that picks out only the essential elements of each image. This staticness doensn't mean each shot is devoid of internal tension - for instance, the opening tracking long-shot that follows the policemen in the direction of the hut, works against the movement of the river, and is a brilliant, if wrong-footing visual introduction of the film's themes (the disjunction and perversion of the natural in modern life etc.). But even startling comic upsets - such as the collapse of the makeshift roof under which his friends toast the dead man when one of them drunkenly knocks over a beam - doesn't prepare us for the bizarre sidetracks the plot will soon take.

The dead man, Taho, was an ex-con who spent decades in his river hut reading the world's classics; Yosuke shared many hours with him when he was supposed to be looking for jobs, with Taro encouraging him to ditch his cripplingly submissive conformity and search for true love. Just before he died, he told him that he had left a stolen treasure in the house of a former lover in a far-flung seaside town, which he was welcome to take if he could find it. Broke and unemployed, Yosuke sets off, and follows the lady of the house, Saeko, to a local supermarket, where she breaks water and shoplifts. It emerges she has a 'problem' with welling internal water that can only be vented by kleptomania or lovemaking. Yosuke takes a job with the local fisherman's son, and is on call for whenever Saeko needs him. But when he falls for her, is it for herself or the life-giving water which gushes into the adjacent river, attracting all the fish?

Yosuke's journey from the rather glum order of Tokyo to the weird logic of the seaside town is like the move from the Victorian age to Wonderland in Lewis Carroll's famous book. Yosuke wanders the town, populated by eccentrics whose actions seem more determined by whim and desire than the fixed expectations he's used to, like a bemused Alice, in his case being slowly sucked in by the town's seductive call, and suffering some very odd dream sequences. Imamura's tone changes completely - the music becomes circus-like playful, the staging of scenes, the clash between rigorous framing and nutty events, increasingly absurd (see the wonderfully coy **lla**o sequence). This mode undercuts what seems to be a very middle-aged male fantasy - the spiritual regenration through sex of a hen-pecked husband. And when you think about it, the town isn't that much of a haven - racist, riven with small-scale organised crime and the legacy of industrial pollution, and full of visual evidence of economic delapidation. But Imamura's eye for the meaningful image of location with which to frame his dense, ambivalent compositions never wavers, and his sensitivity to labyrinthine interiors, natural light or water (the deflection of dissolving light from the river onto buildings is particularly beautiful) or delicious colour-coding (those reds!) is as true as ever.

I've only seen this movie and The Eel by this director but I love the director and his female lead very much because of this movie Warm Water Under a Red Bridge. It was a wonderful life affirming viewing experience that made me laugh out loud a few times. I was looking forward to seeing more movies in this warmer style (I wasn't as fond of The Eel) but sadly, the director passed away - an old man. In any case, this movie makes me happy just thinking about it and knowing someone salty and humorous was out there thinking up these things makes me smile right now. He was so naughty!

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.

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.

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.

Mr. Darragh O'Donoghue's review pretty much says it all, but I can't help but add my voice to the chorus of praise and try to lift this one to 5 star status!

Imamura makes complicated, multi-layered films where the drama becomes so involved that the intentions of the characters can sometimes get muddled, and crucial plot points often pop up much later than we're used to. It's kinda like life!

Yasuke (played by the always likable Koji Yakusho) is an unemployed salaryman visiting his hobo/philosopher buddy, Taro, while away from home on a job interview. Taro dies, but his tall tales of treasure in a small village home compel Yasuke to investigate. The house is near a red bridge...

To make a long story short; Yasuke finds the red bridge, and the house, and a beautiful woman living there, Saeko (played by the erotically coy Misa Shimuzu) and a torrid and, ahem... unusual affair begins.

A wild cast of characters, bizarre circumstances, and comical situations play throughout the film, but one thing I really enjoyed was the almost Herzog like physicality of this film. It somehow drives home the life affirming purity of sex. I noticed it from the first moment Yasuke reaches that beautiful red bridge and slaps his hand solidly on the railing. Yasuke gets a job as a fisherman (very physical work) and pulls up nets full of big tuna, he outruns an African Olympic runner (who is training w/ his Japanese coach throughout the film) to be with Saeko. Yakusho gives a very lively and physical performance against Imamura's bright and colorful palette. This is in sharp contrast to the job interview scene and the scene with the nagging phone call from Yasuke's hateful wife, which are shot behind sterile, impersonal panes of glass.

I could go on and on about the complex story and hilarious setups, but I encourage you to read all the other reviews and of course watch the film for yourself. With so much either ugly or boring sex in TV and cinema it's nice to see a film that depicts the act in a fun and life affirming manner.

We must love how life flows and to do that, we drink deeply; we imbibe the water of life, bathe in it, swim in it, flood ourselves with it. Such is the environment of this film, Imamura's 2001 work, a perfect fusion of real and surreal.

A young woman who fills with water--not urine, but pure water--which can only be "vented" with sexual release finds a willing partner in an older businessman who's lost his job. The man, an urban dweller (Tokyo) meets the woman, a rural denizen (small seaside town), when he follows his dead friend's instructions on recovering a "buried treasure" the friend hid in a house that's now occupied by the water woman.

Water as the essence of life, linked to sexuality, is also the environment of Francois Ozon's miraculously great film Swimming Pool, but here it is given a unique treatment by Imamura who uses, similarly, a young woman as his focus. But here, unlike in Swimming Pool, the male is a major character; here, Imamura gives us both sides of the sexuality coin, male and female, and gives us, because of that, a more flowing film that fills the viewer with the essence of living for the moment. By concentrating on the female, and leaving the male aside, Ozon took an approach that was more penetrating, analytical, psychological. Imamura's way is a more emotive one.

Though radically different from Imamura's prior film, The Eel, it nevertheless shares the same involvement of those whose lives are shaped by day to day necessities, those who live by working every day to survive. The male's transition from corporate sales in Tokyo to fisherman in a small town gives us what Imamura wants us to experience; maybe Oingo Boingo's great song "Wild Sex in the Working Class" comes to mind. Would the male have had the chance to engage in such amazing carnal pleasure if he'd been able to stay at his job and with his nagging wife in Tokyo? One thinks not.

An interesting companion piece to the director's 1966 film, The Pornographers, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is a radically different film that, rather than taking the perspective of those who observe and objectify sex (porn filmmakers), instead lets us feel what pleasure is directly through these two disparate characters, the young woman and the older man. While The Pornographers' tone is wry, detached, satirical, that of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is amused, delicious, even lip smacking.

A fine how dee doo for all us hedonists indeed. Definitely recommended.

After reading reviews, I decided to take a chance on this film. I was pleasantly suprised by the acting, content and storyline. For those that must know, it's an adult comedy. Yes, there were serious parts in the film, but to say more is to give it away. Somehow, someway, I think there are people that may relate to the characters (needing love, having to have needs fulfilled, etc). The only reason why I didn't give the movie 5 stars is the very, very end of the move. I had an issue with the treatment of the passing of one of the characters (too quick, not enough depth). None-the-less, a good film! Four stars!

Yosuke is a crumbling salaryman - but not really, since the salary isn't coming in any more. In a culture of lifetime employment, mid-career changes are difficult if not actually disreputable, so there's pressure to get a new job, any job. Hoping to find better chances outside of Tokyo, he lands in a fishing village, with a half-believed story of hidden treasure. What he finds instead is cute Saeko, wearing a long loose skirt (there's a reason for that). She's stealing something insignificant from a store, and standing in a puddle on the store's otherwise dry floor.

Obsessed, he hunts her down. When he finds her, she grabs him and makes love right there, with completely unexpected outcome. She has this little problem, you see, and can only relieve it by doing something naughty - like stealing, or ravishing a surprised stranger. Relief comes in the form of a magical "venting" of water, gallons of it, jets of it, and not one of the usual human excreta. She finds him extremely relieving and, in a charming twist, her outpouring turns out to match a kinky side that Yosuke didn't even know he had.

It's pretty silly, and the sexual themes never cross over to real eroticism (unless you share a kink with Yosuke). The story, such as it is, wanders rather aimlessly between an African student on an athletic scholarship, a street thug, a fishing boat, and a sweet young woman with a little problem. In the end, it's a problem they kind of like.

-- wiredweird

Along with Oshima Nagisa and Shinoda Masahiro, Imamura Shohei is considered to be one of the main promulgators of Japanese New Wave cinema of the 1960s. However, unlike the politically charged cerebral modernist/post-modernist films of Oshima and the ever varying films of Shinoda, Imamura is often considered to be the most humanist of the New Wave directors and instead of embracing the ideals of urbanite revolutionaries he turned to the poor, rural citizens who, steeped in their folk traditions, supposedly contain untarnished souls without influence of modernity and the West, i.e. America. Although many of Imamura's later films take place in the city, their characters often leave the world of materialism and convenience in order to come closer to nature and there true selves. Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001), Imamura's last full length feature film, holds to this tradition.

Sasano Yosuke is an out of work architect who spends his days going to job interviews while grimacing when his demanding wife asks him to send money and whether or not he has found a new job so that she and their son can return from her family home in Tokyo. Quite unmotivated in finding a new job, Sasano spends quite a bit of his time with a homeless man called Philosopher Taro whose shanty home is filled with scholarly works. Unfortunately for Yosuke, Taro passes away, but before passing away, Taro informs Yosuke that he stole a golden buddha statue from Kyoto and hid it in a small town called Noto. Not having much else to do, Yosuke goes to Noto and, while buying a cheap lunch, notices an attractive woman, Shimizu Misa, stealing some cheese. Walking over to the spot where she had been standing, Yosuke finds a golden earring in a puddle of "water." He follows the woman back to her home and after eating a bit of cheese, the woman comes on strongly and the two make love which results in the woman's inner "waters" to spurt forth like geysers. Yosuke soon learns that water builds up in the woman and that stealing trinkets and cheese helps her relieve the pressure. Not wanting her to steal again, Yosuke becomes her man to help relieve her of her water, but as the woman's waters begin to run dry, will Yosuke's affections remain as strong?

Never one to shy away from sexual themes, viewers new to Imamura might be surprised to learn that the director was in his mid-seventies when he created this sexy little film. However, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge is in no way a sleazy film, and the sex scenes are quite mild and entertaining instead of steaming and titillating. As with many of his other films, such as The Eel and The Pornographers, Warm Water is threaded through with magical realism and the film's quirkiness is quite entertaining although some might find the whole of the film to be a bit patchy. While not one of Imamura's best films, Warm Water does ask the viewer to delve into libidinal delights before they get old and their waters dry up, so the film might be a bit much for some, but for others it makes for an entertaining two hours.

My wife gave this film to me as a present a few years ago. I am a bit biased about this film. I give it five stars because I really think this is a very good film, and more importantly, it's so darn different from so many other films I have seen. I really like the acting of Koji Yakusho, and I wish more of his films were accessible here in the west. In fact, I would like to see him in more films. I think he is an incredible and underated actor in Japan. The film is a very strange one. The film starts with Yosuke Sasano (Koji Yakusho) being let go of the firm he works, and wondering where he will find a job at his age.

One of his friends is named Taro, who is a homeless old man, and he likes to revel in tales of his past youth. In one of these stories, and before his death, he tells Yosuke about a treasure of gold that he hid in a house near the sea in Noto. The treasure is near a red bridge. Out of work, with no idea as to when he will work again, Yosuke decides to leave Tokyo in search of this hidden gold. However, he comes across someone who has a very strange problem. The house where the gold is supposedly hidden also is the very house where this strange beautiful woman lives. Her name is Saeko (Misa Shimizu).

I don't want to give away her problem, as this will ruin part of the story for you, and the film. However, I will say that her problem is of a sexual nature. But the way it is treated is very hilarious and I might add, done in a happy sort of way. The Saeko's grandmother also lives in the house with her, and she is waiting for the man who left her, and promised to come back. However, that man was Taro, the homeless man who has since died. This is a delightful comedy that I really enjoyed, and I recommend that you at least rent it, because it is a charming film. High recommendations.

An unemployed architect hears a strange story about treasure from a bum on the street, having nothing better to do he delves into the mysterious story and goes to explore the village where the treasure is.
At the village he meets up with an unusual woman who lives in the house where the treasure is supposedly located. The movie deals with growing old, changing relationships, life changes, love, silly things. The subtitles are excellent as is the quality of the dvd.
119 minutes of excellent drama with a little quirky humor thrown in...well done by a famous director, Shohei Imamura. Very deserving of the international praise it received.