Mizu no onna (Woman of Water, 2002)

Sugimori Hidenori

Japan

115 min, color, Japanese (English subtitles)

This has to be among the most overrated films at Sundance this year. If you read the capsule reviews, you'd expect a poem in images and color (even if not in story). It is true that Sugimori goes for style over substance but in the end he got very little of either. The photography has its moments for sure but was uneven as a whole. I mostly objected to the very cluttered environments that spoiled what would otherwise have been a truly magical experience. Yet it had such potential.

Ryo (Ua), whose name means "cool clear water" runs, very appropriately, a public bath house in a small town somewhere in Japan. She is known as the Rain Woman because every time something important happens in her life, a heavy rain would fall on the town. The film opens with the torrential rain on the day when both her father and the man she is engaged to die. Ryo takes a trip where she meets a mysterious girl whose insistence that people can share without being personally inquisitive profoundly affects Ryo. The Rain Woman discovers that the scenes from her dreams exist in reality and resolves to begin a new life.

She soon meets a vagrant, Yusaku (Asano Tadanobu), whom she takes in. Having come to terms with the freedom that comes from anonymity, Ryo begins a turbulent love affair with Yusaku completely unaware that he is wanted for arson. As she finds his strange attraction even more compelling, Ryo drops more of her safeguards. Yet all her efforts come to naught when Yusaku is recognized by the wandering old lady who has gone mad after Yusaku burned her house with her family. When Yusaku decides to leave, he is struck by lightning and killed.

There was an extremely interesting idea in combining the elements of water (Ryo) and fire (Yusaku). Although it is not uncommon for male characters to be redeemed through the sacrificial love of a woman, the story could have been made interesting had it been paced better. Yusaku is transformed, or at least is at the verge of being transformed by Ryo. He does not long for the hypnotic power of fire any more (witness the scene where he rather dispassionately sets fire to a tire in the dwelling of the old lady; not only is he not excited, he seems positively bored). He also begins to believe that he might be symbolically washed from the filth (recall the dream sequence where there's only water, no fire). In the end, it does not work. The discovery destroys his chance of redemption and, quite appropriately, he is killed by the element that provided meaning to his previous existence. Without a future, he is unable to turn to his past. Ryo's rain can only fall on his scorched body. What she does on a daily basis for complete strangers she is unable to do for her lover. His filth proves to be unwashable.

The biggest problem with the film is its languorous pace which the story cannot sustain. If it were consistently elegiac in its photography, the film could have been forgiven. Yet, as I mentioned before, despite several occasions of very moving shots, the pictures as a whole were not very imaginative. I think that quite a bit was lost when the director proved unable to frame the scenes as to avoid the overwhelming presence of many foreign objects (e.g. the rooms of the house, even the public bath house). The film is also too long given the lack of story, and eye candy can only cover this up for so long.

January 24, 2003