mevmijaumau One reason why Japanese films are my favorite is because they seamlessly mix art and entertainment. While mainstream American films focus too much on the latter, producing mostly fun but forgettable flicks, and Russia, for instance, is known for tediously known snoozefests, with Europe being mostly hit-or-miss and the Chinese film industry being contaminated by propaganda, Japan has an immensely diverse cinematic tradition with countless gems like this one. Yasuzo Masumura's Irezumi (Tattoo), may not carry a strong underlying moral or a message, but instead the beauty lies in its mood and style, perfectly balancing the line between seductiveness and dark violence.It's based on the novel by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, who also wrote the literary basis for Masumura's slightly more famous film Manji. Irezumi is scripted by Kaneto Shindo (director of Onibaba and Kuroneko) and stars Masumura's muse Ayako Wakao, in one of their many, many collaborations. This is essentially a revenge tale with some erotic undertones and acting which ranges from excellent to downright cheesy. Another thing about it that's a bit uneven are the murder sequences, some of which are badly put together, while the others are truly painful, bloody and disturbing as it's intended.The main character is a morally ambiguous femme fatale who gets kidnapped into geishahood and gets a tattoo of a tarantula with a human face tattooed on her back (it's worth noting that the Japanese word for tarantula is jorogumo, joro standing for "prostitute", as both Wakao's characters and tarantulas are bloodthirsty). The Shakespearean romantic story and the increasingly dark atmosphere wonderfully come together in the film's striking climax. The cinematography is wonderfully realized, but hurt by the foggy print quality. The movie is really begging to be restored.

chaos-rampant Following the doomed and star-crossed love between the feisty daughter of a wealthy merchant and the timid clerk that works for her father, IREZUMI is cut from the mould of classic Shakespearean tragedy but with a distinctly Japanese spin. For reasons that elude me, the Japanese have taken quite an affection to their idea of the deceitful femme fatale, the "spider woman". Here the feisty daughter becomes one quite literally by having a grotesque "spider woman" tattooed by force on her back on orders of the pimp she's sold to. While her lover prowls the red districts of Yoshiwara looking for her, she leads a luxurious life as a geisha by scamming people off their money with her pimp as an accomplice. Weaving together a typical revenge plot and the idea of psychosomatic auto-suggestion as the woman starts to believe that she's "really" a spider woman after being tattooed and urged by her pimp to leech money off her clients, director Masumura and writer Kaneto Shindo (who also scripted MANJI for Masumura and directed some very famous Japanese horror movies like ONIBABA and KURONEKO) create in IREZUMI a bold, beautiful, no-nonsense revenge drama that doesn't skimp on the violence. When people get killed, it's ugly and messy. When they don't, they weave around them webs of lies and deceit or find themselves caught in one.Masumura's assured but laconic direction (no tracking shots, no moving cameras - his camera remains locked on a tripod with the occasional imperceptible pan) is a masterclass in miss-en-scene, careful framing and pacing a movie without calling attention to his work as director. Simply put, the guy knows how to take a great shot and he knows how to pile great shots one upon the other to make a great scene and he knows how to orchestrate his scenes to make a great movie that moves effortlessly from start to finish. Add to that the superb editing and some great acting by Ayako Wakao (gorgeous in the lead role) and you've got yourself a proper forgotten gem from the classic epoch of Japanese cinema. I'm looking forward to catching more of the director's work.

christopher-underwood Most impressive bloody drama of operatic proportions. Doubly wronged our heroine ends up a geisha with a tarantula tattoo upon her back. Apparently the first part of the Japanese word for tarantula means prostitute and so she feels she has no alternative but to remain in the profession into which she was forced. What she can do though is take revenge and hey does she take revenge. This is beautifully photographed action all the way and it gets plenty bloody, with a wonderfully over the top ending that makes you want to stand and applaud. How much this is a tale of an exploited woman and that of a woman overcoming adversity will be up to each viewer to decide. Gentle eroticism is a bonus and if this is not quite as crazy as the same director's Blind Beast it is just as audacious. Bold, bright and beautiful.

dourdou As a character Otsuya is willful and self-centered and her beauty sparks desire in every men who simply are puppets to her. As her geisha her training is not even hinted, being one is just resumed in the movie as a woman whose will and beauty empower her to command her wishes to any man. Her might and her vampire-like behaviour is represented by her tattooed black spider which both fascinates and repulses her lovers who nevertheless got voluntarily caught into her web. The only man she seemed to love is Shinsuke but even him got corrupted by her evil as she finally gnawed and sucked every traces of strenght in him. However some ambivalence resides in her character by the inner desire to find a man who could match her and fully accept her that is both her soft and "spider"parts.