Insect Woman

Sternness, rawness? Certainly - but it is also interesting to observe the means by which Imamura achieves this. The film spans several decades, capturing many collisions, crises, and vicissitudes, yet the narrative flows at almost the same pace, uncompromisingly not dwelling too much or too little on any of the subjects. Not only does this relativize their moral status, but it also achieves a detached narrative - the story flows almost homogeneously without interruption, allowing for an exploration of the characters' current inner selves. The film is analytically cold in this regard, keeping only what is essential from the characters' actions, from which their motivations and goals can be reconstructed, and trimming away everything else as unnecessary. However, this is not to say that Imamura cannot capture what is important, quite the contrary. In the end, what remains is just the "skeleton" of human behavior - money, sex, money for sex, or sex for money, trading future prospects for money, trading future prospects for sex. It is a formal finesse that in a film where the narrative does not pause where it "should," the camera and editing pause where they "shouldn't." (06/26/2015)