Sakuran by Mika Ninagawa opened the Focus selection at the Festival del Cinema di Roma on Friday. The movie debut was at the 2007 Berlinale and Gaia Morrione – the curator of Focus – chose this film for opening the spectrum of the Japanese retrospective which spans from Rashomon to Porco Rosso. Presenting the movie on stage, Ninagawa illustrated how the roots of Sakuran bathe in manga culture.
I didn’t know anything about the movie and all I had read was a hint of the plot. I expected a typical “Eve against Eve” crêpage de chignon situation, but with Oiran bathed in magnificent costumes and Japanese esthetics instead of belle époque or hollywood backdrops. It was much more than that!
From the first frames I was plunged in a full Almodovarian universe – violent primary colors, raucous women fighting against each other in the best movida tradition, and irony! If you expected some sanitized sushi aesthetics, forget about it, here it’s about hearty tonkatsu filling your visual stomach!
Anna Tsuchiya has the insolence of a Japanese Christina Ricci and her character, Kiyoha is both stubborn and slouchy. The reconstruction of 18th century Japan has the irony and humor seen in Takeshi Kitano, and in the Tokyo’s Yoshiwara pleasure district we feel at home, in the Atame! apartment and in Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin rouge.
Childhood flashbacks have muted and pastel tones, with scenes remembering the more classic Japanese period filmography, mixed in with some Ingrès suggestions (take the furo gynecée scenes). Utamaro‘s prints textile and sexual intricacies take central stage during the girl’s apprenticeship in the pleasure quarter. Primary colours shout louder and louder and the movie dives in its full chromatic force as the little girl becomes Kiyoha and then a courtesan, an Oiran, after a self-contained, perfectly gory cameo reminiscent of Hana Bi.
The movie is a visual feast, and Ringo Shiina’s Heisei Fuzoku soundtrack mirrors this abundance, with rock, pop and big band sounds thrown in as a communication code devised to share the emotional state of our heroine, climbing from ingénue to absolute celebrity like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
But this is a love story, and a happy end one!
I remember seeing it at the Berlinale a few years ago. Voluptuous visuals.
Yeah…it must have been in the 2007 edition…fabulous repechage…! was movie director Mika Ninagawa platinum blonde back then too? ;D