A Snake of June
(Rokugatsu no hebi, 2002)

Tsukamoto Shinya

Japan

77 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

Although I have not seen the famous Tetsuo, this is not my virginal experience with Tsukamoto in the director's chair. His outlandish Bullet Ballet has prepared me to expect the twisted and the unconventional. But I was surprised by this outing: a stylish, stylized, and quite potent rumination about one's definition of happiness, of what it means to live, and what it takes to love. In less capable hands, this could have turned into a maudlin melodrama or a sanitized soft-core porn which is as devoid of content as it is of penetration shots. Some find A Snake of June pretentious, others find it incomprehensible. It is neither.

Dreaming of being herself	Rinko on her way to liberation

The film sets out to put the audience on the wrong track, then gives us the wrong ticket, and pushes us onto the wrong train. Somewhere in the middle the conductor comes and we have to begin discarding all preconceived notions about what the story is supposed to be like. Then, abruptly, we are pushed off the train, stampeded by a bunch of wild horses with iron penises, and finally thrown into a washing machine. Before we can say "WTF," someone pushes the start button. It's the heavy load spin cycle and they even brought some detergent. Confused yet?

Learning the awful truth from the doctor	The strip

Rinko (Kurosawa Asuka) is a suicide-hotline counselor who spends her days persuading others that they should not off themselves. In the hectic and soulless modern day Japan, this is an exhausting job. (At least that's what all these movies have made me believe; I have to ask a native to confirm but I am afraid I may induce a suicide just by asking.) Despite her charming features that led at least one stranger to grope her on the subway (her earned a slap), Rinko is essentially unremarkable and something of a tomboy, at least in the way she dresses. She lives in an ultra-modern apartment (I was quite envious actually) with her fat husband Shigehiko (Kohtari Yuji) who I hope was at least a decent swimmer in a previous life.

Gratuitous shot of Kurosawa Asuka	The tormenting liberator

The couple is quite "intellectual" in that bored and detached sense that no true intellectual ever is. That is, they are caricatures of what the joint existence of relatively well-to-do but actually quite repressed individuals would look like. They hardly communicate. In fact, at first I thought they were an uncle and a nice or something. He spends his time scrubbing the toilet (a personal hobby apparently) and she spends her time dreaming of being a sexier persona. She buys a miniskirt but cannot bring herself to put it on in public. At least she masturbates although she is too repressed to get herself some proper tools for the purpose. Given her husband's libido which makes him don striped pajamas and sleep on the living-room couch, I was surprised she did not already have a lover.

The cold intellectual marriage	Tunnel vision

One fine day, she receives an envelope full of photos of her going at herself. Apparently quite embarrassing for someone like her. She gets a phone call from the photographer who turns out to be one of those people she saved from suicide with the deep line to live their lives like they want to. Well, this guy wants to live his life by making her acknowledge that her own existence is not exactly the paragon of free choice she makes it out to be. He wants her to wear the miniskirt in public. Or else he'll tell her husband about the photos. (At this point, I thought the obvious solution was to hang up: the photos could even make that fat hubby of hers ashamed enough to move him back into the bedroom.)

Dying to be reborn and renewed	Rinko on the prowl

Rinko agrees to the blackmail and follows the man (played by the director) as he instructs her to change into the sexy clothing in a public restroom, then walk around a mall, then buy a dildo from a sex shop, then walk around with the dildo inside her while he triggers it with the remote just when she is buying a banana from a startled grocer, and so on. Fulsome family fun actually. And just when you think this is going to turn into a ridiculous soft-core porn with lots of nekkid flesh grinding against some post-industrial wreckage, the film veers into a dark alley. The blackmailer has noticed a lump on Rinko's breast and forces her to see a doctor who reveals the awful truth: she has breast cancer and she must either lose her left breast or die.

Improper use of a remote-controlled vibrator	You have to use the big one to capture the orgasm

Rinko attempts to talk to her husband who is less than supportive and understanding. He seems mostly concerned with the fact that his wife is going to be a freak that he won't be able to touch. Given how little touching he's done up to this point, that does not seem particularly troubling. Faced with a choice between a life as a discarded and sexless object of nobody's desire and a short but filling life as a woman, Rinko decides to forego the operation. She resolves to experience her sexuality (but not be unfaithful) and her startled husband finds himself jerking off in public as his own wife wreathes in ecstasy meters away from him stark naked in the rain manipulating the vibrator's remote with abandon.

Throwing off the covers of self-repression	The husband's passion finally flickers

The blackmailer has decided to teach Shigehiko another lesson his self-involvement too. He drugs him and dumps him at a club where people kneel with hands tied behind their backs and cones placed on their faces. At first, only a small opening at the end is permitted and through it they have an extremely limited angle of vision, like a camera obscura. Shigehiko dimly sees a couple forced against each other, repeatedly banging their bodies, as if they are having sex but without desire, as puppets. Then they are dragged away and a larger opening in the cone reveals that they are now placed in a washer. As the machine starts to fill with water, the couple frantically tries to escape. Shigehiko loses it and attempts to flee the club. He has missed the entire point of the exercise: the couple was undergoing a cleansing and symbolic rebirth that would allow them to reconnect.

In the flash light	Strangled by the iron penis

So the next time Shigehiko meets the stranger, the blackmailer forces him to undress, then savagely kicks Shigehiko for condemning Rinko to death with his lack of concern for her, then metaphorically strangles him with a long iron snake-like penis, then tars him, and beats him unconscious. When Shigehiko wakes up, he finds himself in the washing machine staring at those cone-wearing men. As the water rushes in, she scrambles to find a way out. His reunification with Rinko shows that he has escaped his own hell too: he accepts that her disfigured body would still be that of the wife he loves and the couple reunites in a happy ending that makes one wonder if the incessant rain that permeates the entire film will also come to a stop eventually.

Where your wife is more than an object	Reconciliation

A marvelous film, shot mostly with a hand-held and with a strong blue cast, A Snake of June is a sight to behold. I saw the Japanese R2 DVD which presents the film in its OAR of 1.33:1 (that is, the other releases are most definitely not pan/scan whatever some reviews have to say about it). The academy ratio and the bluish monochrome make the film look very classy despite its overtly modern approach to editing and cinematography. There are two Japanese soundtracks, a DD 5.1 and DTS. I listened to the former and it was quite good (there isn't much going on in the sound department). The optional English subtitles are bright, readable, and without spelling errors. The first disc comes with a photo gallery, and the second is chockfull of extras that are all unsubtitled, so I did not bother with them. There are UK and USA releases on single discs, and they are probably a lot less expensive and just as good. This is a film you really want to see at least once.

March 11, 2006