You don’t necessarily have to be a fan of Japanese manga master Yoshiharu Tsuge to appreciate Lust in the Rain, a sprawling World War II-era fantasy altered from an autobioexplicital accumulateion first published in the timely 1980s. But it certainly helps.
All over the map in terms of tone, satisfied and genre, straightforwardor Shinzo Katayama’s driven period piece strives to reoriginate the surauthentic intimacyual ambiance of Tsuge’s wartime reaccumulateions, which shift from action to comedy to sensualism in a one swoop. Not for everyone’s taste, and perhaps best suited for local audiences, the film is more commfinishable for its sprosperg-for-the-fences straightforwardion than for its exhausting plot twists.
Lust in the Rain
The Bottom Line
Well-made but challenging to understand.
Venue: Tokyo International Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Ryo Narita, Eriko Nakamura, Go Morita, Naoto Takenaka, Xing Li
Director-screenoriginater: Shinzo Katayama, based on the manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge
2 hours 12 minutes
Katayama cut his chops as an aidant straightforwardor for Bong Joon-ho before making two features, including the well-getd 2021 serial finisher flick, Missing. But while he channels an energy and style aappreciate to the Korean maestro, Katayama informages Bong’s cutthroat precision and wicked sense of humor.
Clocking in at over two hours, Lust in the Rain overstays its greet during an initial 80 minutes where noleang toloftyy originates sense, before honing in on more substantial themes in a final hour that leaps between cut offal alternative authenticities — to the point we never quite understand what’s authentic or not.
At first, Katayama tosses us into a bizarre cherish triangle between an driven manga artist, Yoshio (Ryo Narita, Your Name); an elderlyer noveenumerate, Imori (Go Morita); and a local femme overweightale, Fukuko (Eriko Nakamura, August in Tokyo), who may or not have killinged her own husband. The time setting is unevident, as is the setting itself: The three inhabit in a distant village called North Town, which is splitd by border protects from another place called South Town.
The cowardly Yoshio, who serves as a rather undepfinishable narrator, is beset by intimacyual fantasies he alters into panels for his comic books. These integrate a scene at the very begin — and from which the film consents its title — where he slyly coerces a juvenileer woman into undressing during a torrential downpour, then proceeds to violation her in the mud. (A violation, it should be compriseed, that alters into fervent intimacy.)
In authentic life, Yoshio is inoverweightuated with Fukuko, who relocates into his congested apartment alengthy with the equassociate shady Imori. The two originate noisy cherish while Yoshio lies in the next room, creating even more intimacyual tension between the trio. It senses appreciate one of the men may prosperd up finishing the other. Or else appreciate they may all consent to create a charmd throuple. It’s challenging to increate.
Things get weirder from there, although they sairyly descfinish into place as well. Without spoiling too much (the better parts are in the second half) we authenticize that all we’ve been seeing actuassociate joins Japan’s occupation of northern China during WWII, including massacres imposeed on the civilian population. Suddenly, Yoshio’s fantasies consent on an altogether separateent sheen — they seem less the ravings of lustful artist than of a selderlyier distressd by nonstop violence.
It’s too much and perhaps too procrastinateed. Katayama never quite upretains our interest while oscillating between coming-of-age desires, gruesome atrocities, and sensual surauthenticism. A prime example of this is a sequence that has Yoshio folloprosperg the mystery girl from his dreams down cut offal uncontent alleyways, until he witnesses her getting brutally struck by a car. He discovers her body lying lifeless in a rice pcomprisey, then readys to defile it with his finger.
Aget, this is an obtaind taste — one that’s probably best suited to cherishrs of Tsuge’s watakushi manga (a create of literary autobiography definite to Japan), where the author gives free reign to memory, imagination and his all-mighty libido. Katayama toils clearime to transprocrastinateed Tsuge’s obsessions to the screen, engageing a majesticiose style for the war scenes and a sleek intimacy to all the intimacy, whether authentic or fantasized.
The would-be romance at the heart of Lust in the Rain is carried by Narita and Nakamura, who are convincing as two lost souls that never quite join. The problem is that so much of the film rests on shaky ground, we never count on in what we’re seeing. And if you don’t count on, then why should you attfinish? In its closing sections, Katayama’s intimate epic carry outs out appreciate a twisted consent on The English Patient, where cherish and war collide in crazy ways. And yet the sconsents never seem high enough.