The final feature from iconoclast Japanese director Shoei Immamura (1926-2006), Warm Water Under a Red Bridge ("Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu") is a leisurely sort of “body horror” lite sex comedy and social satire. The approach is a staid and whimsical one (imagine with dread how anime cartoons might have addressed the same premise!), and there is more male flesh uncovered than female, even with the tastefully handled vaginal fixation of the fantastic plot.
Jobless following the collapse of an architecture firm, Tokyo salaryman Yosuke (Koji Yakusho, a Nippon screen favorite) is thrown out by his money-grubbing wife and given an ultimatum to make a living. Yosuke hears a tale that a lost WWII treasure from the vagrants and outcasts who are his new peers. There is a gold Buddha figure worth millions of yen, still hidden by a red bridge in a remote Japanese fishing village. Yosuke goes there, does find the bridge and straightaway encounters Saeko (Misa Shimizu), an alluring local woman (in red, of course), who dwells with her dotty grandmother in the candy-and-pastry shop that is the secret treasure location.
Saeko has a biological peculiarity, whether due to industrial pollution or something more mystical. She chronically fills with “water,” a colorless, odorless fluid, that she must expel by either doing something naughty (shoplifting, mostly) or via ecstatic sex. During passion with Yosuke, literally, geysers of water engulf the lovers (and cartoon-comical audio f/x resounds on the soundtrack).
As the unhurried plotline unfolds, and the Tokyo man falls into the rhythms of the weird little community, one learns that Saeko’s effusions have become part of the local fishing industry ecosystem, and a previous lover of hers died mysteriously. Is she a victim or a vampiric predator in this yarn?
Pacing may test the patience of some viewers, though continuous twists and curves thrown by Immamura should hold the interest of fans not only of Japanese cinema but also fish-out-of-water sagas such as Local Hero, I Know Where I'm Going and TV's Picket Fences and Twin Peaks, with their insular-village settings, full of eccentrics and possibly paranormal hijinks.
However, it takes a supporting character's monologue to deliver the typically Immamura message against conformity-ridden, business-fixated, propriety-obsessed Nippon society being bad for the soul. Whereas an odd woman who drenches her bewildered partner with seminal liquid during lovemaking? Maybe worth taking a chance on. Recommended for international/Far East cinema collections.