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"We have no dreams, so we can't see them destroyed." The image is a concentrated sprawl of nocturnal Tokyo, a galaxy of neon stings and lechs on wheels. The coed (Miyuki Kuwano) is rescued from one lout to go with another, the university student (Yusuke Kawazu) takes her to street protests and then to a seaside lumber yard, just the floating void for a deflowering. Days of youth, as Ozu would say, brushes with gangsters and extortion games with middle-aged men. Disillusionment reigns: The once-committed sister (Yoshiko Kuga) has accepted the status quo, the ex-beau (Fumio Watanabe) has gone from promising doctor to clandestine abortionist. Dad gives voice to the older generation, "we thought we had new horizons..." Political and carnal anger, already keenly braided by Nagisa Oshima. A squalid room makes for a poor sanctuary, jukebox music has the couple dancing to news of a pregnancy, it quickly fades. Hand-held whirls across the CinemaScope rectangle, the spasms of boxed-in juveniles. "A victim of money," everybody's story—the protagonists hop on a getaway cab but cannot pay the fare, the older mistress they were fleeing steps in to settle matters. Mysterious icons, a looming blue telephone and an intruding cement mixer, a green apple munched in an extended close-up for the benefit of Tsai Ming-liang. (Oshima's delinquents can also be felt in films by Hou, Yang, and Jia.) "Back in our day, young people used to be shy!" The boy is crushed under the underworld boot and the girl leaps onto the pavement, their contorted bodies are brought together as superimpositions on a widescreen: A modernist's parody of transcendental Japanese romance, or his aching yearning for it? With Shinji Tanaka, Shinjiro Matsuzaki, Toshiko Kobayashi, and Jun Hamamura.
--- Fernando F. Croce |