"Empire of Passion" is a story of unbounded passion, crime, guilty conscience and eventual loss.
The story takes place in a Japanese village in 1895. The monotonous lives of Gisaburo, the husband, and Seki, the wife, is changed forever when Seki begins an affair with a younger man, Toyojo, who convinces her that they should kill her husband to be together freely. Gisaburo's murder is the beginning of the sufferings of Seki and Toyojo, who are driven to madness in their own different ways.
Director Nagisa Oshima interweaves into his horrifying story elements of Japanese culture, particularly the belief in the appearance of the ghost of dead people. In Empire of Passion, it is in fact the appearance of Gisaburo's ghost which drives the already-troubled Seki more and more towards madness, to the point where the boundary between reality and dream (or better to say nightmares) becomes blurred.
Some critics said Akira Kurosawa was depicting "hell" in his 1961 Yujinbo. I believe it might as well be said the same for Empire of Passion, in its own way.
The story takes place in a Japanese village in 1895. The monotonous lives of Gisaburo, the husband, and Seki, the wife, is changed forever when Seki begins an affair with a younger man, Toyojo, who convinces her that they should kill her husband to be together freely. Gisaburo's murder is the beginning of the sufferings of Seki and Toyojo, who are driven to madness in their own different ways.
Director Nagisa Oshima interweaves into his horrifying story elements of Japanese culture, particularly the belief in the appearance of the ghost of dead people. In Empire of Passion, it is in fact the appearance of Gisaburo's ghost which drives the already-troubled Seki more and more towards madness, to the point where the boundary between reality and dream (or better to say nightmares) becomes blurred.
Some critics said Akira Kurosawa was depicting "hell" in his 1961 Yujinbo. I believe it might as well be said the same for Empire of Passion, in its own way.