I feel like I have to add a comment to this film, because I believe that it has been misunderstood, just as Eyes Wide Shut may have been misunderstood. In fact, it is not a coincidence that I bring up the name of Kubrick's last film: both are similar in themes, and share a strangely similar style.When I first heard of this, my thoughts were: it was either a failure, or people were repulsed by the peculiar and taboo theme of female ejaculation (a very real phenomenon, I assure you, though it was exaggerated here). When I finished watching, I was slightly puzzled, but also concluded that my second hunch was probably correct. Nonetheless, this happens to be the most different film made by Imamura, so one can expect for it to have its lot of skeptics; people were disappointed. Interestingly, Kubrick seems to have drawn very similar conclusions in Eyes Wide Shut, which became his obituary: the couple decide to leave things be, to forget about the odd things that had happened, and just get a healthy relationship working again. The film is about sex. Warm Water is also about sex. Imamura's conclusion did have an extra element though: a wise old bugger who happened to be decidedly insightful about the matters of the nature of man -- Taro. The character brings an intriguing, though not altogether novel, take on society, which is in effect a synthesis of much of what Imamura has previously expressed in his films. I believe that Taro is Imamura.

What a joy.Most folks will focus on the warm water part of this. Its the story, rich in social commentary, Japanese mythology and sexual politics. Its pleasant enough I suppose, but for my taste it is barely adequate to support the real matter of this, the red bridge part.You see, sometimes it is enough to simply tell, and it almost matters not what is told, so long as it doesn't distract. Its the Van Gogh approach, I suppose, where he could literally plunk himself anywhere with proper light and paint what he encounters. Chair, tree, field. What matters to us is the manner of how he sees, and how he can convey that. Its the composition of his mind and how he tells a story about that while fooling us into thinking the story with the sound is the thing.Now, I like it better when its all integrated. but I'll take this too. What he does is typical of Japanese filmmakers, and indeed many Japanese artists. Each moment needs to breath within its own world, and that world confined only by the limits of its breath. Everything has to be balanced in a way that it seems to have grown that way with intrinsic wholeness.His method -- also typical of Japanese film -- is to see the frame of scene as the horizon of these microworlds. By this is mean both the visible frame of the sides of what we see, but most particularly its depth and the stroke between the points of beginning and end. Its not quite painterly because its a composition rooted in movement, and these dynamics are never to be found in static images.The story talks of a treasure hidden in this location. Toward the end, the story makes explicit that the treasure is the womb, the source of all rivers. You have to make the small leap to finish the fold, that each episode you see is a visit to a womb, the fresh smells of small life conveyed.What a joy.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Imamura does here what Neil Jordan does in Crying Game; he takes two seemingly incongruous elements, fetishistic sexual obsession and contemporary socio-political malaise, and weaves them effortlessly together. Imamura's rigorously geometric framing contrasts with the feathery- light content of the tale. Having said that, there are some gritty moments here; a drowning born of insanity is rendered in stark black-and-white, and the social plight of Japan's cast-aside middle-aged salarymen is emblematically captured in Yakusho's performance. However, at heart this is a fun movie that surprises and delights. It is all about the mise-en-scene, perfectly delivered each time by Imamura and the principles. The film does flag at the end; it felt like they opted to go for melodrama purely because the allotted time was running out. The previous two acts make up for that third-act missed beat. One gripe is that the edition I bought had no Extras apart from the theatrical trailer. I would have liked a Making Of to confirm my suspicion that this film was as much fun to make as it is to watch. It must have been murder for cast and crew to keep a straight face during those venting scenes...

This film is not a as good as Imamura's "The Eel", but is hauntingly memorable. The plot leaves a bit to be desired ,but the characters and the situations are engaging and intriguing. Like "The Eel" the film is populated by people outside of mainstream society, misfits and "losers", but all the more endearing for it. The film is full of memorable vignettes, the fishermen by the river, the couple who run the guest-house, the family run fishing business and the African runner. All of these characters and situations have hand in the transformation of the central character's transformation from unhappy salaryman, trapped by mainstream society, to an outsider with a new found freedom. This and "The Eel" have similar qualities to the films of Julio Medem. A sort of Japanese magical realism.