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Sada

 
 
Already the subject of two movies in the mid-1970s (Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses and Noboru Tanaka's The True Story of Abe Sada), the bizarre tale of Sad Abe still exerts a grip on the Japanese popular imagination.
Born into a poor family in Tokyo in 1905 and forced into prostitution
in her late teens, Sada achieved notoriety in 1936 when she strangled her married lover and severed his penis, which she was still carrying when the police arrested her. Since then, her name has been a Japanese synonym for amour fou.
Veteran indie filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi has evidently approached Sada's story in a fresh way. Sada is essentially a biopic, chronicling her life from the age of 14 (when she lost her virginity) to a seemingly happy old age.  From one point of view, it's a story of abasement and humiliation: an account of the fate of one powerless woman in an ultra-patriarchal society. From another, it's the story of one woman's inner strength and covert resistance. Clearly the casting of Hitomi Kuroki as Sada (fresh from her triumph in Yoshimitsu Morita's hit Lost Paradise) strengthens the 'feminist' perspective.
Film buff that he is, Obayashi has opted to shoot the story in styles which evoke past eras of Japanese cinema. The early scenes - in which the 36-year-old actress controversially plays Sada as a 14-year-old -- are modelled on silent comedies. Later on, especially in the central romance between Sada and her hen-pecked lover Tatsuzo (ex-comedian Tsurutaro Kataoka), the visuals are designed to be reminiscent of films from the 'golden age' of Japan's studios.
Obayashi's film is reportedly very different from Oshima's: less concerned with sex as such, and more focused on the story's social context. It should make interesting viewing.
Tony Rayns

Synopsis

One of a series of auteur films produced by Shochiku through its Cinema Japanesque production arm, Sada relates the true story of Sada Abe who, in 1936, shocked pre-war Japan by murdering and castrating her lover.
In carefully reconstructing the events leading up to the tragedy, and offering us a strong sense of that turbulent period in the country's history, Obayashi goes some way to explaining why Sada, condemned by the law, finds herself lionised by the press and hailed as a popular heroine.
The director also delves beneath the facts of the case to explore Sada's character and the traumas and obsessions that drove her to this amour fou. Along the way, using techniques reminiscent of traditional Japanese cinema - ie, his treatment of a love scene featuring a young, inexperienced Sada, and a slow-motion fight - he delivers a fascinating love story.
"Those years [the 1930s], shaken by a profound public unease and approaching a second world war, were not so different from the present, a time of unrest and dehumanisation on the cusp of a new century," says Obayashi. "The only fundamental difference is that [in that period] murder was thought of as one of the effects of a deep relationship between two people, as exemplified by the case of Sada Abe."

 (Dir): Nobuhiko Obayashi (Scr): Yuko Nishizawa (Cast): Hitomi Kuroki, Kippei Shena, Norihei Miki, Negishi, Bengal (Running time): 118 Minutes
 
 
 

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