Unagi (The Eel) is Japanese director Shohei Imamura's first film since 1989's critically acclaimed Black Rain. That film saw him in Competiton at Cannes, as did the 1983 Ballad of the Narayama, which won the Grand Prix. Imamura returns to the Palais with a typically personal film which subjects contemporary Japan to his critical gaze. Imamura has a reputation for working in a much less stylised manner than Japanese cinema is known for - internationally anyway. Subject-wise, he is interested in matters outside the traditional Japan of the tea ceremony and the geisha, instead choosing to focus on the earthiness of the lower classes.
"After Japan lost the Second World War, the traditional Japanese way of life was overturned," he told Moving Pictures from Tokyo. "I spent my adolescence working in the black market. I was overwhelmed by the forthright attitudes of the people I met. They spoke their minds completely - something that was impossible during the war."
Given that Imamura has a stark, detached style and an almost anthropological approach to his characters, it's no surprise to find that he has made many TV documentaries.
Like many other major Japanese directors - Kurosawa, for instance - Imamura has struggled to attract funding for his films over the last 15 years. He had to mortgage his house to help pay for Black Rain, and his attempt to make an adaptation of a novel by Masuji Ibuse couldn't get off the ground. With Unagi, Shochiku Co has at last given him the chance to make a film of his own choosing. It's perhaps fitting that the 70-year-old director is back working at the studio where he began his career in the 50s, as an assistant director at their Ofuna studio.
The inspiration for Unagi comes from a novel by Akira Yoshimura. "Novels by Yoshimura often deal with social problems," says Imamura. "However, this one was different. It focused on an obsessive relationship between a man and an eel, and I was fascinated by the way it was portrayed."
Unagi tells the story of Takuro, just out of prison after serving eight years for stabbing his unfaithful wife to death. In prison, he catches an eel which becomes both his pet and his confidant.
One day, not long after his release, he saves a young woman, Keiko, from suicide. He gradually becomes attracted to her, and hopes to resume a normal life. But just when things are going well, a chance encounter threatens to reveal his crime to her. Yamahita is forced to confront his past and his feelings, but all he wants to do is live quietly, like an eel in the mud. "Considering the insanity of Japanese society today, where the main topics of conversation are extra-marital love affairs and the prostitution of high-school students, I thought it relevant to picture a man who does not regret killing his unfaithful wife," says Imamura.
The film's leading man, Koji YAKUSHO, has box-office appeal in Japan, having leapt to fame with the smash-hit Shall We Dance?, directed by Masayuki Suo.
Female lead is played by Misa Shimizu, best known for her role in another Suo movie, the comedic Sumo Do, Sumo Don't. "For the main character, I needed a man who could be an ordinary 'salary man', and at the same time be a killer," says Imamura. "I needed someone who could appear balanced and not insane. For the woman, I was looking for someone who was cheerful in nature and somewhat carefree."
Unagi sounds like a typical Imamura film in the sense that it exhibits a characteristic sympathy for what one critic has described as "the primitive in the blue serge suit". Imamura does not criticise the strong, ancient passions that threaten to burst through the surface and envelop his characters, but feels that they are as essentially Japanese as the layers of refinement placed on the country's citizens by centuries of tradition. There's also a slightly surreal touch to the movie, provided by the eel. "The eel symbolises both God and the man's best friend," says Imamura.
Richard James Havis
Prod co: Imamura Productions
Prod: Hisa Iino
Dir: Shohei Imamura
Scr: Shohei Imamura, Motofumi Tomikawa, Daisuke Tengan
Ph: Shigeru Komatsubara
Ed: Haijume Okasayu
Cast: Koji Yakusho, Misa Shimuzu
Running time: 117 mins
Int sales: Shochiku
