By the 70’s, and through his own production company, Wakamatsu Pro, Koji Wakamatsu had managed to move pretty far away from his pinku past, with his movies screening at university campuses and Theatre Scorpio, attracting a more youthful and intellectual audience, who were looking for much more than titillation. Wakamatsu, always the great “promoter”, realized this change in his audience, and proceeded on making films that were more political, and also captured the interest of his new audience, with “Shinjuku Mad”, which takes place in one of the most vibrant with youthfulness areas of Tokyo, being a great example of this turn.
The film begins with two members of a theatre group being assaulted by a group of unknown thugs, who kill the man, and then strip the woman bare and paint her naked body with his blood, in a scene that strays away from the rest of the movie,...
The film begins with two members of a theatre group being assaulted by a group of unknown thugs, who kill the man, and then strip the woman bare and paint her naked body with his blood, in a scene that strays away from the rest of the movie,...
- 4/3/2021
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
The fact that the pinku film could be used as a medium for both artfulness and sociopolitical commentary has been repeatedly highlighted in Koji Wakamatsu’s filmography, and “The Woman Who Wanted to Die” is another testament to the fact.
Getting inspiration by Mishima’s ritual suicide, which essentially failed to fulfill its purpose, Wakamatsu focuses his narrative on two interconnected couples, who eventually meet in a resort during heavy winter, in the wake of the aforementioned incident. The first couple comprises of a mature man and a younger girl, with the former insisting to marry her, despite the fact that she considers herself unworthy and having suicidal tendencies. The second couple comprises of a rather angry young man, who is about to commit suicide due to his anger for his girlfriend abandoning him, and the owner of the resort, who, in her effort to calm him down,...
Getting inspiration by Mishima’s ritual suicide, which essentially failed to fulfill its purpose, Wakamatsu focuses his narrative on two interconnected couples, who eventually meet in a resort during heavy winter, in the wake of the aforementioned incident. The first couple comprises of a mature man and a younger girl, with the former insisting to marry her, despite the fact that she considers herself unworthy and having suicidal tendencies. The second couple comprises of a rather angry young man, who is about to commit suicide due to his anger for his girlfriend abandoning him, and the owner of the resort, who, in her effort to calm him down,...
- 2/26/2021
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Number 146 on Kinema Junpo’s 2009 list of Top 200 Japanese Films of All Time, “Violence Without a Cause” is one of the 11 movies Wakamatsu shot in 1969 and an ode to the way exploitation can be used for social commentary.
Three 19-year-old men from Aomori, Harada, Matsumoto and Osawa, live together in a small room in Tokyo, despite their different financial backgrounds, which have one working to make a living, one receiving a significant allowance from his family and one a miniscule one. The three are not friends by any chance, and the sole thing they seem to have in common is their tendency to whine about not having money, girlfriends, and constantly being bored. Riding home on a train one evening, they decide to go to the beach, where they have a fight that becomes violent briefly, just before they stumble upon a couple, whom they proceed on attacking,...
Three 19-year-old men from Aomori, Harada, Matsumoto and Osawa, live together in a small room in Tokyo, despite their different financial backgrounds, which have one working to make a living, one receiving a significant allowance from his family and one a miniscule one. The three are not friends by any chance, and the sole thing they seem to have in common is their tendency to whine about not having money, girlfriends, and constantly being bored. Riding home on a train one evening, they decide to go to the beach, where they have a fight that becomes violent briefly, just before they stumble upon a couple, whom they proceed on attacking,...
- 2/1/2021
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
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