Viewed on DVD. Restoration = five (5) stars. Director Nagisa Oshima delivers a trashy 90 minute strip tease. The star and sole attraction here is sex-bomb actress Keiko Sakurai who although a bit chunky is exceptionally well endowed. Her bouncy, semi nude, and simulated sex scenes are scatted throughout this ludicrous movie and meant to keep adolescent members of the audience in their seats. To see Sakurai in action, viewers in the theater were forced to sit through rambling, meaningless, and trite dialog spouted by what has to be some of the most unappealing actors filmed in a Japanese movie--their ugliness is amplified by exhibiting their out-of-shape bodies in mostly half naked fashion. (Fortunately, disc viewers have fast-forward buttons on their remotes to skip this stuff.) To say that scenes lack continuity is to put it mildly. Early shots provide some fine existential views--especially those showing empty freeways--together with provocative symbolism. But this gets quickly buried (and forgotten) in the abject silliness that follows. Cinematography (wide screen, black and white) is quite good with one of the longest tracking shots (if not the longest) in Japanese films to that date. The Director often uses home-movie style, back-and-forth panning between speaking actors instead of cuts (which allows him to show off and, at the same time, induce headaches in the viewer). Music is (mercifully) close to nonexistent. Subtitles are often too long and interfere with viewing Sakurai in action. (Since they poorly translate the spoken nonsense, the viewer might want to turn them off together with the audio track so as to better see (and concentrate on) the actress' performance.) Best to locate the remote fast-forward button before playing. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Nagisa Oshima's Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967) takes place in near-future (the seventies?). It's unclear what happened prior to that, but it left the streets desolate and there's a group of members of a secret army planning to overthrow the government or something. It's an absurd, nihilistic, a bit confusing but always captivating film with the usual political ideas, characteristic of Oshima's work. The youth is aimless and violent, the soldiers are disillusioned, and everyone is obsessed with death and violence, talking about guns all the time while a 18-year old nymphomaniac girl wanting to have sex with each character is constantly ignored, only to become a means of salvation at the end. The movie is shot exceptionally well - the B&W photography is especially creative in the opening 20 or so minutes, but it stays strong all throughout, with its elaborate lighting schemes, precise actor placement, rapid pans and unusual angles. The entire film is somewhat funny, yet somehow unnerving at the same time. It's totally "artsy", but also straight-forward and entertaining. Hard to describe, but worth a watch.

A film sometimes will stay with you for an inexplicable reason. This time, it's not so hard to figure out - Nagisa Oshima decided to make a film that is not too long, maybe 90 minutes or so (I forget the exact running time), set most of it in one location, and make it about how human nature is just really, really strange sometimes. Especially in Japan. Now, contrary to what the title says, it's not really a film about suicide, at least not fully. One of the main characters IS fascinated by wanting to off himself, and keeps on trying to find a way to do it. And he's accompanied by a young 18 year old woman who is quite aroused and wants to get her rocks off with another man. Then there is the other guy who is just really hyped up on guns. But what is the movie about? Well, I'm still not sure if it has an exact narrative that can be seen as A-B-and-C straight through. It's more in line with something like the Exterminating Angel, as close as I can figure, as it's about how the suicide guy and horny girl are walking along one night (he her boyfriend, sorta), and they get caught up in a hide-out where a bunch of men are paranoid about a war starting, or some kind of attack. And their fears are amped up by reports on the news of a white-American gunman taking out people at random. There is a lock-down, but the people in this big gray hangar could leave whenever they want. But things keep on happening to keep them there...It's maybe a film that most pointedly and wonderfully looks at male frustration and nihilism, with this one girl who keeps trying to have something with a man (and failing, not for lack of being attractive but just because the men are pre-occupied with their "guns" so to speak), and paranoia in general. I loved the atmosphere of everything in this one place, as the people are there and they don't leave, at least until the last fifteen minutes or so. When they do leave, Oshima makes some real suspense and action, but not how one would expect. It's technically a thriller, but everything is underlying, and the suspense isn't for the when but how things will happen. I loved it, but it's definitely an acquired taste.

Combines the political commitment and narrative experimentalism of Godard with the lush, deep-focus aesthetic of Ford and Kurosawa.I wouldn't know what to think of the film if I hadn't recently researched the U.S. occupation of Japan. Oshima presents Japanese youth as obsessed with matching the brutality and aimlessness of their American counter-parts.When a sociopathic, loner American sniper attacks a Japanese city, the local gangs can't decide whether to react to him as a life-style savior or an imperialist invader.Magnificently formal shot compositions that almost bring to mind the "Metaphyisical style" of de Cherico's paintings.As is characteristic of Oshima, the only redemption is through sex.