Gate of Flesh and Story of a Prostitute
Two from Seijun Suzuki
Reviewed by Marc Savlov, Fri., Aug. 19, 2005
Gate of Flesh
Criterion, $29.95
Story of a Prostitute
Criterion, $29.95
Word up: There's no truth to the rumor that Seijun Suzuki's grim take on the gender politics and daily travails of Japan's "comfort women" during the Sino-Japanese war inspired Slick Rick's classic bass-thumb ode to misogyny "Treat Her Like a Prostitute." Still, this comparatively restrained black-and-white gem from Suzuki's home base Nikkatsu Studio is as dark a template for wartime intergender land mines as anything else the prolifically profane director ever helmed. As lushly eye-popping as any of his more luridly colorful yakuza outings, the ravishing Yumiko Nogawa is the harlot Harumi, doomed to fall for dog soldier Mikami (Tamio Kawachi) while forced to service his sick puppy superior Lt. Narita (Isao Tamagawa) beneath the incendiary skies and below the muck-filled trenches. Never one to hold back anything he deemed suitable to enhancing the solar-plexus punch of his filmmaking (a gambit that eventually got him fired from Nikkatsu Studios), Suzuki crams the film full of black-and-white powder and lights a match to the myth of honor among warriors and the women who love them. Shot the previous year, Gate of Flesh is more standard Suzuki fare – meaning it's so overloaded with riotous color-coded moments that sensitive viewers are advised to don blast-goggles before partaking. Widescreen subversion masquerading as sleazy melodrama, Suzuki's tale of guys and dolls duking it out for the title Most Totally Fucked in post-WWII Tokyo is a brilliant piece of faux-schlock filmmaking that creeps you out even as it gets your blood up. Innocent, clueless, and starving to death, young Maya (Yumiko Nogawa) finds her only hope for survival in the whorenet's nest of a ramshackle brothel run by the iron-willed Komasa Sen (Satoko Kasai). Rule No. 1 – don't give it away for free, baby – gets broken almost immediately and, predictably, there's hell to pay … but the only yen around is for survival at any price. Both of Criterion's discs sport suitably flawless transfers, subtitles, and recent interviews with the filmmaker, still a wily scamp into his 80s.
