This is the Seijun Suzuki-directed Kagero-Za, based on the novella of the same name by Kyoka Izumi which I read prior to this (but which didn’t help much since it was very difficult to read and the movie goes in its own direction for most of the runtime). It’s a very beautiful movie! I was very much taken with it visually from the start. And I stubbornly watched without subtitles, even though, just like the original, it is very difficult to fully parse, with the very very stylistic presentation not giving you a lot to hold onto and the Taisho setting adding difficulty as well. Even with reading synopses over, the impression can be foggy, and heck – it’s very likely that with English subtitles a lot would remain so. Looking up images I’m remembering just how cool and unique the presentation is though – it’s not a movie where characters enter and exit scenes in a standard way. I seem to remember a lot of lingered-on tableaux of characters standing in particular locations, as if they dreamily wound up there, before scenes start. Or there’s the incredible way that lurid violent images are used in the background of sets near the end of the movie. It’s very much one to watch for artful design and presentation that isn’t meant to be taken fully literally. And come to think of it, having read the novella, it matches the tone of the author’s prose remarkably well, despite not being especially faithful (in the sense that the book takes up about one scene of the movie). I wish that I were fully able to keep up with the movie language-wise, but I totally respect it and think it’s beautiful, and I remain with high expectations for the last of Suzuki’s ‘Taisho trilogy’ (although I’m also very intimidated – this definitely seemed much more difficult than Zigeunerweisen, although I watched that quite a while back with English subtitles). A couple standout things I remember: