Empire of Passion (1978)

The companion piece to In The Realm of the Senses (reviewed here), Nagisa Oshima's Japanese ghost story explores many of the same themes as his previous French co-production, but (unavoidably) lacks much of that film's visceral thrills. In their place lies an overwhelming paranoia that tends to make the film, at least with regards to narrative, kind of a one-trick pony. Visually however, the film is a treat; Oshima does the genre a great service with stunningly composed images and subtle elements of horror that from which Hollywood could take a view notes.

When Toyoji, a soldier recently returned from war (Senses's Tatsuya Fuji, showing his versatility here) befriends and seduces (to put it politely) the wife of rickshaw driver "Little" Seki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), the two hatch a nefarious plot to do away with her husband. But this is a ghost story, and in such tales the dead don't stay dead for very long, so it doesn't take much time before weird things start to happen. As the town and the law grow more and more suspicious, our periled lovers start to lose their grip as their world grows more and more constrained.

If In The Realm of the Senses was about how sexuality and personal gratification act in spite to society, Empire of Passion responds by portraying how society takes their revenge for such actions (not to say the couple of Senses get away unscathed); in this sense, Empire is almost a mirror of Realm. In this film Fuji is the aggressor, it is man who is woman's downfall, and there is little trace of the former film's moral ambiguity. The film is more than a treatise on these themes though, and though it is hard to avoid comparing the two films, Empire of the Senses does succeed on its own merits. The film features some genuinely terrifying moments even if it doesn't offer the overt titillation of its companion piece, and one might argue that the cinematography of this film trumps that of its predecessor. Though it offers little variation to a familiar tale (The Postman Always Rings Twice), the beauty of the images and the pacing of the film lend this interpretation a much appreciated aura of otherworldly doom. B-

Other semi-related thoughts:

-I love the abrupt endings of these two films

-For some really great Japanese ghost tale flicks, check out Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari and especially Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan

-Why is modern horror, Japanese and American alike, so wack?

-A Happy 55th to my dad, Dude.