赤色杀机

No other country’s cinema comes as nearly audacious and perceptive as Japan’s with regard to foreground the blunt force of animalistic libido, before Nagisa Ôshima’s notorious succès de scandale IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976), Imamura’s 6th feature, INTENTIONS OF MURDER, is another unbridled monstrosity, wherein sex is portrayed in its basest, rawest impulse.

Sadako Takahashi (Harukawa), a cornfed, low-class housewife, is not one’s usual protagonist, a put-upon, passive, primitive woman, even her sensuality is a far cry from those comely, coy, or glamorous figures who conforms to our society’s conventional aesthetics of what are labelled as “sexy”. Sadako has a lamb-like obeisance, whether in front of her priggish husband Koichi (Nishimura, an outstanding player who can evoke repugnance without hoking it up) or her snooty mother-in-law Tadae (Aka), even facing Hiraoka (Tsuyuguchi, terrifically fiery, sweaty, solely embodied by libido and fatality), the desperate burglar and rapist, she is so hard-wired as a doormat, her instinctive resistance has a bovine, elephantine mobility that soon yields to the latter’s prowess, her submission into any type of bullying or sexual assault has a practical aspect that dispenses with any psychological complication.

Such depiction of rape and its aftermath, Hiraoka, an unqualified saddo, inexplicably gets smitten with Sadako, who inversely, reluctantly falls under compliance of his sexual advancement, is contentious to say the very least, but Imamura isn’t afraid of tackling the prickly issue, he and his co-scribe pave a cogent road of narration that justifies Sadako’s underdeveloped sense of self-worth, her sit-below-the-seat position in the family (she was previously the family’s maid whose name is jinxed by her wanton grandmother, presently, is only a common-law wife), her angel in the house duty and Koichi’s dismissive, male chauvinistic attitude towards her, treating her merely as an object for sexual gratification, a generative womb and a biddable caretaker. We see multiple times of Sadako conscientiously penciling in quotidian expenses on a book, indicating that is the most intellectual thing she is manage to do. Who can blame her for treasuring a modicum of respect and admiration from others, even if the enabler is her rapist (is Koichi any different from Hiraoka on that matter?).

Just when audience senses a whiff of amour fou (Sadako decides to elope with Hiraoka but with an intention of murder) in the pipeline, Imamura, again, finds a turnaround for our unsophisticated heroine, meantime, Koichi’s mistress Yoshiko (a bespectacled Kusunoki, exemplary of short-sightedness), an erotomaniac who trails the pair on a snowy trek inside a tunnel, is overtly enthusiastic for the prospect of marrying into Koichi’s household. A one-stone, two-birds ploy cunningly solves Sadako’s marital problem, and even gains her an upper hand in the legal procedure to earn her name in the family. Imamura’s perversity of fighting Sadako’s corner makes for a brilliant, eloquent tirade at the hypocrisy, sexism and classism emanated by the society at large.

Apart from carving out a flesh-and-blood character arc for our heroine (Harukawa arduously earns our sympathy through her toiling in the murky, inclement, perilous scenarios that befall her relentlessly), INTENTIONS OF MURDER also superbly constructs Imamura’s visual and audio flights of fancy, like the spine-tingling reveal of a cannibalistic mouse, a dancing shirt twirling with its own volition, the silkworm metaphor, or Sadako’s nightmare of being swept off into the void, peerless cinematic imagery and montages are rife in this tale of life’s dual conflicts between depravation and innocence, sex’s dual aspects of banality and sensuality.

referential entries: Imamura’s STOLEN DESIRE (1958, 7.4/10); Nagisa Ôshima IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976, 8.2/10).