Fans of avant-garde Japanese sexual perversity (and you know who you are!) will enjoy this fetishist swirl from Shinya Tsukamoto, director of Tetsuo: The Ironman and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, focusing on the problems of a suicide hotline staffer named Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa). Rinko's older husband is constantly absent, claiming that he is working overtime, and when he is home he seems to have an obsession with housecleaning. If that isn't odd enough, Rinko is being watched by a stalker with a telephoto camera lens: she receives an envelope containing pictures of her masturbating in the privacy of her home. Who could've taken such pictures and how? And what is the photographer going to demand to keep the photos hidden from sight? Even stranger is the weather: it never stops raining. None of this quite makes sense, and perhaps it's not supposed to. But it does come wrapped in a haunting, chic style (the film is shot in a blue-tinted monochrome), and its overwhelming air of erotic weirdness suggests that Tsukamoto has been watching David Lynch's films (the film feels closer in style and substance to Mulholland Drive than to the Tetsuo series). Recommended. (P. Hall)
A Snake of June
Tartan, 77 min., in Japanese w/English subtitles, not rated, VHS or DVD: $24.99 Volume 20, Issue 3
A Snake of June
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